Shop Shop
A group of 11 artists runs a shop in Brussels during one year, starting in January 2014. Shop Shop is a collective artistic experiment embedded in a local economy primarily addressing basic needs. Its neighbours are butcheries, bakeries and night shops, rather than fashion stores or art galleries. In this specific context the group wants to research the etymological root of the term ‘commerce’, in which the prefix ‘com’ signifies ‘together’.
‘Researching’ is here understood as ‘thinking through doing’. All participating artists promise to dedicate 10 to 20 % of their professional time to Shop Shop. Firstly, they are present with their individual artistic practices. Out of these, products and services can emerge which, in their turn, can be sold. Secondly, they engage in the collective decision-making process of how to run the shop. The team will discuss and put into practice every phase of opening and running a shop: collecting the starting capital, investing, finding and installing the place, deciding what to sell, connecting to the existing local economy, producing and promoting the various articles and services, defining the value and price of these goods, selling, reinvesting the money and so on. Through dealing with ‘real’ products, ‘real’ money, ‘real’ problems, the group aims to redefine ‘product’, ‘value’, ‘profit’, ‘risk’, ‘consumption’, ‘competition’, ‘cooperation’,…
Shop Shop is part of OTÇOE – works for passers-by
Credits
context: radical_hope
participants, guests: Ariane Loze, Christoph Ragg, Einat Tuchman, Elke Van Campenhout, Heike Langsdorf, Michel Yang,
Michiel Reynaert, Miriam Rohde, Nicolas Y Galeazzi, Raquel Santana de Morais, Sébastien Hendricks.
partner: a.pass, Permeable City
SHOP-ING / group of developers: Elke van Campenhout – Bureau dEspoir, Nicolas Y Galeazzi, Dolores Hulan, Heike Langsdorf, Ariane Loze, Christoph Ragg, Michiel Reynaert, Raquel Santana de Morais, Carlotta Scioldo, Einat Tuchman, …