Rirkrit Tiravanija

This collection of short, looped video clips documents Rirkrit Tirivanija's recent Serpentine Gallery exhibition 'A Retrospective (tomorrow is another day)' which ran from 5 July - 21 August, 2005. The videos are personal views of the exhibition as a project by the artist Paul, Marc & Raymond, who captured footage within the installation during the final weekend of the show. In observing the audience and gallery staff within Tirivanija's exhibition -an environment deliberately created to instigate participation on the part of its viewers- Paul, Marc & Raymond captured various elements of the realities of audience involvement, having access to the exhibition as any visitor would.

Visitors were invited to intervene in the installation but without specific instruction. A physical structure was created by Tirivanija that used the footprint of his own apartment in New York as the basis for a plywood recreation of its spaces. This was made twice over in a mirror version and in the centre a radio broadcasting studio was built. The catalogue for the exhibition talks about a curatorial desire to restage previous Tirivanija works in a manner "akin to theatrical performances or musical scores", and this was probably most specifically encapsulated in the daily radio play that was broadcast from this booth (on Resonance FM). This was a fictional work written by Tirivanija and his collaborators that interwove stories about previous participatory works Tirivanija had made. Gallery visitors were invited to participate in this by playing parts from the script. Paul, marc & Raymond's observations are of more prosaic events: a woman writing a joke on the wall, pictures and commentary that had been pinned up, invigilators and visitors alike cooking in the two kitchens, a regular visitor sleeping in the beds, and Saturday afternoon sport broadcasting on the televisions. It does not include footage of the audience engaged in scripted role-play, but focuses on their engagement with other aspects of the 'stage' set by Tirivanija, and is presented as set of curious exploratory encounters.