2010
Hotel room at the Museum of Contemporary Art, GfzK, Leipzig (DE)

If private companies appropriate culture and art to increase their profit then why not have a museum that appropriates and tests business models? We have hotels like the chain group W-Hotel, which profits from the image of contemporary art and design. Why not think of a contemporary art museum that creates a hotel? In the example of the W-Hotel, art is used for mere profit maximization; if the moment comes when the owner feels that contemporary art is not useful anymore, they would switch to something else immediately. The museum could turn this relationship between art and private enterprise into a subject of reflection and debate.

When the GfZK commissioned a new café, I was approached to adapt the concept of Paris Syndrome to a hotel room. This followed the principle of the director to continue working with artists over a longer period of time and to reframe artworks time and again. Therefore, some of the café’s items found their way directly to the hotel room: like the “Louis Viutton” benches; the chandeliers, the photographs of iconic architecture rebuilt and displaced from their original locations (e.g., the Eiffel Tower, which was rebuilt in Shenzhen China). Other objects were slightly modified—e.g., two “poles” of the café tables were used as poles for a desk, which received a new table plate, this time in red. Some things were newly made (the colour scheme for the carpets and the staircase), or bought (the school maps that were used in the GDR in the 1970s). These beautifully drawn maps showed a world that no longer existed—actually, it referred to a different, gone reality. Other things added were small bottles of toiletries, a notepad, a ballpoint pen, and bath mats referencing famous and/or faraway hotels from all over the world.

Hotel Paris Syndrom opened in 2011 and it still operates.

Reservations:
Price: 100 euro per night for one person, 120 euro for two (including VAT at the current rate, breakfast and free parking)
E: hotel@gfzk.de

> Museum of Contemporary Art Leipzig, GfZK

Images courtesy GfZK, photos by Sebastian Schröder