A new version of the "Schadenfreude Guided Tours"
The "Inside Out – Critical Artistic Debates Concerning Institutions" will begin with "A new version of the Schadenfreude Guided Tours" by Luchezar Boyadjiev, artist based in Sofia who prepared his guided tour specifically for the exhibition Inside Out.
I Supply! You Demand?
(Schadenfreude Guided Tours) 2003–2015
I do not know if visitors to an art event need to have a live
artist at hand in order to ask questions about the work(s) in
a group show. But I know that after the opening, artists are
usually not needed by the organizers of an art event – the
sooner you leave the “site of the crime”, the better. So,
I have rarely had the chance to see, let alone communicate
with, those people who are actually going to the shows I am
participating in. And I might have only a vague idea why they
go in the first place.
I am not sure if what I supply – guided tours around shows
of contemporary art – meets the demand of the audience.
I am a provider of a service that maybe no one needs. I am
available to guide visitors around the show, but I am not able
to figure out the dialectics of supply and demand. Hopefully,
if something is supplied, the demand will follow. On the up
side though – I supply more than artsy explanations… For
instance, my fellow artists, who are not around while I am
giving the tours, have no control over what I might tell the
audience about their works. This is the Schadenfreude bit –
“Tough luck, mates – I take pleasure in your absence, which
is your misfortune…” :)
My misfortune, though, is that there is hardly a way to fully
document what goes on between me and the tour-takers… :)
Sofia, July 8th, 2003 — June 28th, 2015
Original version: In den Schluchten des Balkan (In the Gorges of the Balkans), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, 2003 (catalogue).