fig.: 'Be a bad girl' intervention in public space by Elisabeth Grübl and Sabine Heine on the facade of the fashion shop and hair salon 'be a good girl', 2004.

PARAFLOWS
Festival for Digital Art and Cultures
10 - 20 September 2009
Container Installation, Karlsplatz/Resselpark


Good girl-stereotypes associated with fashion and beauty

In 2009, the Viennese Festival for Digital Art and Cultures 'Paraflows' has chosen the topic 'Urban Hacking' to show how we are exploring, questioning, and shaping the urban infrastructure by using digital media. The fashion shop and hair salon 'be a good girl' is one of these 'infrastructures' which became a space for an artistic intervention in the exhibited work 'be a bad girl' by Elisabeth Grübl and Sabine Heine.

By 'hacking' the facade of the shop, the two artists are breaking up stereotypes which are associated in combination with a fashion shop and hair salon. The shop's name intensifies the good girl-stereotypes associated with fashion and beauty.

For Elisabeth Grübl and Sabine Heine, the slogan 'be a good girl' evokes a discomfort which is politically not irrelevant. The urban project 'be a bad girl' is the consequent follow up of semantic structures (the imperative 'be' with the instructive 'good' and the narrowing 'girl') which cause principles of behaviour, conventions, thinking and power strategies.

In a night action, the artists had changed the writing on the facade into 'be a bad girl' with the aim to de-construct the social attributions of standardized role models.

Details about lecture series and exhibitions on www.paraflows.at.


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Note by the editor:

ad 'hacking the facade': Please be aware that this art work is exhibited at the Festival for Digital Art and Cultures. This year's theme 'Urban Hacking' focuses on how digital media are influencing our consciousness of the world around. It is open to your imagination if the 'night action' is done in real world or virtual. The artists' message is reaching the people on both ways; most probably Elisabeth Grübl and Sabine Heine attain more attention through the virtual work than by hacking the 'real' facade on the street. What does 'real' in our world mean? Doesn't the content of the digital artwork 'be a bad girl' become real in the moment the message is understood by the users and consequently becomes part of our consciousness?

ad the shop 'be a good girl' : The provocative slogan 'be a good girl' is one reason why the shop became 'cult' in Vienna.