“Art is the lie that reveals reality.” Jeroen Brouwers - “Culture, considered as a process, means acquiring a vast deal of useless knowledge, and then forgetting it.” Albert Jay Nock - “The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.” Douglas Huebler - “In life and in art one has to begin each day anew.” Louis Couperus



Title: Exchange your house keys for a cock and bull story
2007 and ongoing



photos by: Myung, Mieke Meesen, Sjaak Langenberg en Rosé de Beer

Project commissioned by Pluimen, Rotterdam.

You can still order a Burglary by appointment:  € 750,--

Information and order: r.debeer@home.nl







ROTTERDAM – Tourists who pay to have themselves kidnapped in Yemen; millionaires who pay astronomical amounts for a trip in space. Is it still possible to create an authentic experience in a culture dominated by the media, in which nothing is left to imagination any more? In this ongoing project, a number op people relinquish their house keys for a single day in exchange for an unusual story about their home environment - a burglary by appointment. In their temporary lodgings, Sjaak Langenberg and Rosé de Beer work on a text in which the home environment of the inhabitants is subtly altered by their powers of imagination. Without actually changing anything in or about the house, they bring about a metamorphosis. Afterwards, the inhabitants receive the chapter about their house by post. ‘Burglars’ and inhabitants never meet. The project is a critical reaction to the excesses of the experience-market and initially to the everyday practices of the commissioners of this project – a company that offers ‘action-gifts’. At a later date the stories will be published in a book. This project premiered during The Hague Sculpture in 2007, commissioned by the Bureau for Contemporary Adventure. In 2009 it was commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to be executed in the Blauwe Huis in IJburg. You can still order a Burglary by appointment.

Links
Algemeen Dagblad: Huis als sleutel voor verhaal (Dutch only)

© Sjaak Langenberg & Rosé de Beer