Order The Hugo Boss Prize Catalogue

In 2004 the Guggenheim Museum awarded the fifth biennial Hugo Boss Prize to Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (b. Buenos Aires, 1961) in recognition of his profound contribution to contemporary art. Since the early 1990s, Tiravanija has explored a new aesthetic paradigm of interactivity. He has cooked and served food to his audiences, set up a recording studio in a museum, reconstructed his apartment inside a gallery for visitors' use, corresponded via the Internet while on an American road trip with Thai students, and provided opportunities for numerous other everyday activities to occur within art spaces. Tiravanija is a catalyst; he creates situations in which visitors are invited to participate or perform. In turn, their shared experiences activate the artwork, giving it meaning and altering its form. For his Hugo Boss Prize exhibition, Tiravanija has created Untitled 2005 (the air between the chain-link fence and the broken bicycle wheel), a self-built low-power television station, to demonstrate that individuals can be active contributors to their own media culture, rather than mere consumers of it. Using rudimentary electronic equipment, Tiravanija reveals how a broadcast can be transmitted over unused frequencies to a local community, circumventing traditional media networks. Two rooms have been constructed within the gallery: A sealed glass vitrine holds a transmitter, and a plywood structure holds the receiver, or television. Isolated within the vitrine, the transmitter is deemed valuable—just as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regards the airwaves as valuable. While the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, it does not defend unrestricted access to all mechanisms of communication, such as the airwaves. A program is broadcast from a DVD player via the transmitter to the television across unused airwaves by means of the antennae. The found objects enlisted here as antennae indicate the grassroots nature of low-power transmission. To further demystify the broadcasting process, Tiravanija has surrounded the installation with texts describing the technology and its contentious regulation by the FCC in the United States. He also offers viewers instructions for building their own homemade TV stations. While a low-power broadcast could potentially reach viewers miles away, Tiravanija's transmission has been restricted to within this gallery's walls due to the many physical hindrances in New York City (for instance, the widespread use of cable and satellite television interferes with the signal) and the considerable legal and policy implications of broadcasting on museum premises. Tiravanija's democratic desire for everyone to participate freely in his artworks stands in contrast to the FCC's strict regulation of this public resource. Through such a reality-based project, Tiravanija encourages our consideration of commonly held assumptions about methods of communication in this country and issues of free speech. —Joan Young, Associate Curator Rirkrit Tiravanijia, Untitled 2005 (the air between the chain-link fence and the broken bicycle wheel), 2005. Glass and stainless-steel structure with transmitter; wood structure with receiver and furniture; DVD player and two monitors; two antennas; and wallpaper. Courtesy Gavin Brown's enterprise, New York. Installation view, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo: David M. Heald © 2005 SRGF.