Prototype VIPAG

9 Verlaagde Leieboorden - Verzetskaai, Handboogstraat

always open

The VIPAP by Leo Copers is an invitation for the visitors to let themselves be publicly locked up in a metal prison cell. For the duration of five minutes and for the price of one euro, the visitor can get inside a sitting cage that is set up in the public sphere. The work may remind the viewer of Middle Age pillories. The visitor who agrees to being locked up in this prison will publicly confess his crimes. Middle Age pillories had nothing to do with free choice, but here, the visitor will voluntarily choose to be displayed as the ‘perpetrator’. Copers subtly deconstructs the different layers of the situation: he combines a private space with a public space and simultaneously questions the relation between the victim and the perpetrator. He also analyses the mixed feelings the crowd experiences whilst witnessing this strange and carnivalesque spectacle. This scene is both sad and tragic, but also has a comical side to it. Both the visitors as well as the voluntary prisoners become active actors and participants in the artwork.