DIRECT EXPOSURE Karen Lancel

KAREN LANCEL (1963, Netherlands)

Karen Lancel utilizes new media and performance in her artistic work that spreds across the public space and the internet. She designs temporary zones; concepts for meeting places. Lancel¹s work takes place in (city) public spaces like museums, theatres, train stations, squares, and festivals, library, airport. Here she inquires the changing perception of the public space. She explores the coping strategies involved in the experience of being (un)safe and isolated, and focuses on how these experiences are transformed into personal stories. In collaboration with her audience she gives this ongoing process a personal face to show both the horror and the beauty.

		AGORA PHOBIA (DIGITALIS), 2000-04 Agora Phobia (digitalis)is a project taking place in physical as well as virtual environment. It deals with the flexible concept of safety in public and private spaces. Agora Phobia (digitalis) challenges the viewer/participant to go into the experiences related to isolation, safety, wounderability and private/public. Inside the "isolation pillar" pictured above the visitor can engage in a closed internet dialogue with a person living in isolation. These people are for example a prison, a nun, a hermit, an agoraphobic person, a refugee. Extracts of the dialogues are published in the website where also the public can take part in discussion and send messages. Links: Artist's Work at DIRECT EXPOSURE contact and homepage