Other works
Transient Spaces – The Tourist Syndrome
Palanga, Lithuania
From 3rd-11th September 2009, Katy took part in The Tourist Syndrome Summer Camp, participating in the "Displacements" workshop led by
artist Cesare Pietroiusti.
When You Drive It Out One Door, It Gets In Through Another / Pro Vienas Duris Isveji, Pro Kitas Ilenda
A collaborative project by Agnieszka Roguski, Alex Auriema, Anna-Sophie Springer, David Buob, Egle Micikeviciute, Eric Von Robertson, Felix Marlow, Georgios Papadopoulos, Katarzyna Perlak, Katy Beinart, Laura Garbstiene, Manuel Prados Sanchez, Manuela Buttiglione, Nico Angiuli, Saulius Leonavicius, Susan Barnet, Susan Schmidt, Timea Anita Oravecz, Valentina Vetturi
Using fragments of found film recovered from an abandoned cultural centre,the group reconstructed and screened the film in a local cinema.
Eric's blog
Susan's blog
To see the re-edited film:
Through One Door...
I'll Be Your Monkey
A collaboration with Agnieszka Roguski.
In response to the “man with the monkey” who stands on the main tourist street of Palanga, offering tourists a photo with the monkey for money, Katy Beinart and Agnieszka Roguski decided to offer themselves as the monkey to tourists, who could have the opportunity to have their photograph taken with one or both girls.
A sign in Lithuanian explained that a photograph with one or both “exotic foreign girls” would cost 5 Litas or 8 Litas, and that the girls could also be asked to say short statements in their own languages, including “Call me”, “I love you”, and “How much is it”.
The costumes for the performance were purchased at a local second hand clothes store with advice from a Lithuanian local, who described the usual mode of dress for girls visiting Palanga on holiday. Through the performance, Katy and Agnieszka act as tourists in the disguise of local tourists, offering their visual appearance as something exotic, as an object of desire, as a souvenir. Their offer of a transaction plays with notions of identity, questioning our acceptance of tourist modes of behaviour and the prevalence of sex tourism.
The title “I'll Be Your Monkey” also refers to the Velvet Underground song, “I'll Be Your Mirror”, as it through the reflective gaze of the other that the identity of the tourist object is formed. The projection of our ideas of the exotic other say more about our own fantasies than the reality of place and people.
Paradise Lost, 2009
On Saturday 6th June 2009, Katy Beinart and the Oxford Psychogeography Society presented a
psychogeographical tour around central Oxford, discovering the area once known as Paradise.
Participants were given maps dating from the 14th to 20th century and asked to jointly decide a route,
and find traces of Paradise Gardens, the gardens of the Greyfriars who had occupied the area in the 13th
and 14th centuries. When traces were found, participants were asked to read a text from a random
selection in sealed envelopes provided by the Society, and place a flower at the site to mark its
former occupancy.
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The Language of Flowers, 2009
The work consists of a collection of vintage Mills and Boon novels published in the 1970 and 80s, with titles all referring to plants, flowers and trees, and an index card box. The cards document references to flowers in the books and notate the meaning of the flower or plant, according to the Victorian 'language of flowers', a means of communication in which flowers were used to send coded messages, allowing individuals to express feelings which otherwise could not be spoken.
The collection invites visitors to be inquisitive, to flick through the books and seek the more salacious or romantic passages, to explore the popular language of love. The classification of plants asks the audience to consider the sub-texts in the books, and how we represent, respond to and deal with the complex and difficult stuff of love and relationships.
The work also explores the divide between the reality of gender politics, and the fantasy of a romantic view of love sold for consumption by thousands of women. These books were written for a mass audience in the 1970s and 80s, whilst Second-wave feminists attempted to re-frame sexual politics. Are the books, like the language of flowers, a remnant of an era now past, where coded fantasies expressed our emotions, or do we continue to accept and consume the Mill and Boon language of love?