FIVE WINDOWS
by SABRIENA SEIFRIED
Open: 14.11.-1.2., a fictional shop window project in 5 acts: 14.11., 28.11., 12.12., 26.12., 9.1.
au JUS, Av. Jean Volders 24
FIVE WINDOWS
Shopping was (and often still is) a highly feminized activity. The narratives and desire mechanics of much window display are firmly anchored in heteronormative codes of romance, love, feminine beauty and seduction, upholding and teaching which items one must buy to align with gendered and class-based notions of identity.
In contrast, coded signals in shop windows served as veiled broadcasting for a queer scene that emerged in and around the department store. Functioning as substantial sites of encounter and serving as a cover in public space, shop windows historically gave queer men a possibility to engage in conversation with other men, communicate with one another and arrange dates without attracting attention—hidden within the pedestrian crowds and the retail world—creating queer pockets throughout the city center. Gazing at each others’ reflections in the large glass panes, shop windows were turned into attractive cruising spots.
In French, to go window shopping is faire du lèche-vitrines, “to go licking windows.“ Perhaps in French then, the connection is more explicit than it is in English: window shopping is not only a visual activity, but a taste of something unreachable, an erotic activity mediated by glass.
Like theatre, display is a fleeting art. Window dressers must accept that even their best staging can stay up no longer than two weeks; often without a single proof or document that it was there at all.
During the course of three months Sabriena plays with the ephemerality and distinctive forms of vitrine display and window dressing. Having no merchandise to sell, she stages a street theatre that transforms the window front into a fiction of a store vitrine and turns the passer-by and its immediate surrounding into public audience. Shop window display change:
Sabriena Seifried is currently obtaining a MFA in Autonomous Design at KASK in Gent. In her work she explores the ritual(s) of shopping and the history of the storefront display, as well as the ever closer relationship between retail and art institutions, seen through the fashion shop window. During a period of three months Seifried is experimenting with the function of the window front at au JUS as a surface for receiving and reflecting, thereby shielding its interior from the passer-by.