!Upwardly Mobile
a collaborative project by Norman Beierle, Valentina Ferrarese, Hester Keijser, initially produced for the FreeManifesta.

We proposed to use a public space of the Modern Art Museum in Frankfurt during the second week of August (11 August - 18 August 2002).

Approximately twenty-five international artists were invited to send us a work that fits into a transparent plastic bag, which we would hang in the coat check room of the Modern Art Museum. Through this project we offered the participants a real exhibition in the Modern Art Museum of Frankfurt as well as an opportunity to leave the work in the stock of the museum. The artists receive documentation of the show and possibly the receipt from the coat check room. This way they have a chance to upgrade their CV and be a part of an exciting network.

!Upwardly Mobile in the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, 2002

After the FreeManifesta, !Upwardly Mobile has been exhibited in the Ludwig Museum for Contemporary Art in Budapest. As the whole exhibition snugly fits into a standard plastic crate, we can take it with us in the car on any trip to a modern art museum of repute with a suitable coat check room

The coat check room of a museum can be considered as a semi-public space in between the institutional and the non-institutional. Furthermore, it is not bound to the inner hierarchy of the museum life.

!Upwardly Mobile offers a different approach to the traditional way of exhibiting in a museum. This action leaves open a range of interpretations:

- it makes the museum an easily accessible experimental place
- it breaks the line between the happy few that exhibit in major art spaces and other artists that are excluded from this network
- it questions the static rules of the art institutions
- it gives the visitors of the museum an unexpected experience in comparison with the preprogrammed activities

Participating artists: Sebastian Behmann > Beierle + Keijser > Jean Pierre Ceton > Tamuna Chabashvili > Donald Clark > Alasdair Currie > Iemke van Dijk > Caroline Eggel > Escapes > Valentina Ferrarese > Matteo Ghidoni > Amanda McGregor > Hewitt & Jordan > Koen Hauser > Joerg Huber > IRWIN Group > Aurelius Kowalczyk > Andrea Morrucchio > Esther Polak > Erwin Posarnig > Samantha Rees > Erzen Shkololli > Sasha White > Guido Winkler > Juan Zapata > Laszlo Zoltan > Mattias Zuccheti