Strasse 2003 installation: seven leather handbags, and kiosk design

Strasse was a site specific installation commissioned by K & K Zentrum für Kunst und Mode in Weimar. This Centre for Art and Fashion founded a ‘kiosk project’ in 2002 which is located in a former GDR newsstand.

Biagoli’s installation transformed the former newsstand into a kiosk with the appearance of a shop. The goods on display were a series of seven handbags made by Gordon Parmar, to Biagioli’s custom-made designs.

The kiosk was transformed by halogen lights and mahogany veneer. The shapes and colours of the handbags make visual reference to the shopping bags which Biagioli saw in the Olle DDR (Old GDR) exhibition in Apolda. ‘Olle DDR’ is a collection of exhibits initiated by the inhabitants, consisting of objects that offer insight into the past every-culture of the GDR.

In Strasse, the shopping bag intersects with a very different kind of object: the luxury handbag of haute couture. To emphasise this point, slogans and newspaper headlines from the time of the RE-unification were painted on the kiosk windows in the manner of graffiti. A political point informed the making of the work; specifically, the dreams of a luxury lifestyle in a an East Germany society which was still locked into its past.

Strasse opened on 12th December 2003. The commissioning body was Bauhaus University in Weimar. The installation was later remade with some differences for The Guestroom in Berlin in 2005. It was included in K & K Zentrum für Kunst und Mode’s 2005 publication Magazin which documented the ‘kiosk project’ since 2002. The designs for Strasse are also registered with the Patent Office/Design Registry (no. 3018302). Another ‘handbag’ commission followed at Tate Modern ‘Art, Lifestyle and Globalisation’ symposium organised by Biagioli on 26th January 2007.

• http://www.kkkiosk.de
• http://www.lcc.arts.ac.uk/Monica_Biagiol...