History

Founded in 2005, the essential tactic of the Institute is to prove a simple shared thesis we hold upon the ability of interruptive public art in the urban setting to momentarily engage strangers.

Our research focuses upon the interruption of daily life in urban space and its effect upon the surrounding people.

We employ non-catastrophic interruptions in the form of art installations in order to investigate whether these means have the potential to create some openness and time for reflection, humor or engagement with city dwellers.

If society does operate, as posited by French Situationist theorists of the 1960's, on the level of a spectacle then our interactions and relationships to one another living in a city are increasingly mediated by outside sources, confusing what is genuine interaction.

"The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images" (Guy Debord, 1967).

Groups such as Fluxus and the Situationist International were determined to break the confines of the spectacle, and the perpetual voyeurism of rather than participation in life.

"REVOLUTION IS NOT "showing" life to the people, but bringing them to life" (Guy Debord, 1959).

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