The Good Life (a guided tour)

In the background technicians are installing a prestigious exhibition,whilst a smartly dressed lady is guiding a group of people around a series of pristine white spaces, some of them filled with crates and wrapped-up paintings. Along the way she not only comments on the art but also reveals the building to her audience from a unique perspective. Describing interiors, great views and the city’s vibrant opportunities, the lady turns out to be an estate agent who is selling an up-market architectural proposal and a lifestyle that grafts the ‘value’ of art with its institutions. Moving through the labyrinthine building, she finds herself lost in narrow corridors and staircases. Meanwhile the future development projects itself into the group’s collective imagination, fed by the visionary architectural model on display. ‘The Good Life (a guided tour)’ redefines our perception of the art institution and raises our awareness of its part in the ‘creative city’, a scenario that is being played out in metropoles around the globe. The apparently ‘neutral’ frame of the gallery space which envelopes the spiritual and cultural heritage of our society, recedes in favour of that of a real estate opportunity. The estate agent is the embodiment of the denial of any possible negative impact that the creative race between cities in a neo-liberal context might generate. Through a generic language that excludes any notion of ‘gentrification’, her hyperbolic tour creates an exclusive identity. The film’s elaborate treatment of sound – as well as the absence of it – disrupts the untenable perfection of the architecture, and its mediated forms, making the emptiness of the building sensible, which actually is what the estate agent is selling: a lifestyle fantasy projected on an empty shell. ‘The Good Life (a guided tour)’ is an autonomous single screen video piece that can be presented either in an exhibition or screening context. In its first presentation the video functioned as a ‘marketing tool’ for a fictional real estate development ‘The Good Life’, which was the title of the Vermeir/Heiremans solo exhibition at Arnolfini, Bristol (UK) in Spring 2009. The show was curated by Nav Haq.