The intervention entitled Home Sweet Home in the largest exhibition space of the Städtische Galerie is a living space that can be rented for a maximum of three nights during the exhibition. It is offered exclusively by Lukas Zerbst via the AirBnB platform.
Rentable and usable between 6 and 10 p.m., the functionality of the room is changed as soon as someone decides to book the offer. What must be read as art during the gallery’s opening hours by the institutional definition, becomes a collection of everyday objects again when paid for accordingly – and an exclusive experience.
The appeal of inhabiting art, of inscribing oneself as a part of art and of being “in the museum at night” is fulfilled without an audience. Lukas Zerbst undertakes an appropriation of space that primarily concerns the institutional level of the Städtische Galerie site. For it is not a residential space, even according to building regulations, but a public cultural space. It is partially privatised and above all monetarised by AirBnB.
Thus, the principally subversive gesture of simply stripping an art institution of its functionality and thus its exclusivity is a reflection of a development that is shaping our society. For offers such as AirBnB demonstrably destroy affordable living space, fuel the privatisation of profits in a late capitalist society and at the same time evade social responsibility. They are based on a dynamic of evaluations and social control, on a gigantic data collection that one undergoes when booking via AirBnB.
Lukas Zerbst’s intervention and appropriation is a political gesture that is successful, of all things, when it is used as often as possible and, in the best/worst case, even generates profits for the artist.”
– Ingmar Lähnemann (Curator Städtische Galerie Bremen)
