Authors: Dirk Fleischmann, Nav Haq, Tirdad Zolghadr
www.radiogallery.org
Broadcast date: July 24, 2006

LAPDOGS OF THE BOURGEOISIE PRESENTS:

THE STOP SHOW by Dirk Fleischmann
Conceived by Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr

This broadcasting event is to serve as the launch of the long-term research and exhibition project Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie. The project investigates the latent issue of class underlying the field of contemporary visual art. What role does class structure play in production, presentation and reception? These are issues that have been overlooked in the current era, where artists, even when coaxed into anthropological or self-reflexive approaches, leave the socioeconomic hierarchies of the artworld unexplored. What was it that made gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nationality eclipse the class issue with such ease?

As part of the project, the artist Dirk Fleischmann, known for his astute engagements with issues of service work, profit and socio-symbolic hierarchy will present a new version of his ongoing project The Stop Show, specifically for a radio format. Fleischmann’s project, in which competitors must accurately determine ten-second time spans, does not illustrate or ‘map’ the exhibition theme in the usual manner of a group show. His Stop Show, a degree zero playing field of fundamentally equal opportunity, offers no more and no less than a simple competition with the most rudimentary of rules, allowing audiences to participate via phone and internet.