The Parking Lot Biennale is a participatory art work conceptualized by Helidon Gjergji. It was realized for the first time in a parking lot in downtown Chicago, in 2001 and then again in Prague in 2010.

 

 

The project in Chicago was realized in collaboration with:

 

Duncan Anderson, Sarah Attwood, Nick Black, E.C. Brown, Tom Denlinger, Jim Duignan, Wendy Ennes, Tim Fleming / Margaret Catania, Matthew Hanner, Turhan Karabey, Laura Kina, David Lachman, Larry Lee, Deva Maitland, Mellisa Oresky, Michael Piazza, Jennifer A. Ramsey, Stephanie Rothenberg / Lucia Sommers, Melanie Schiff / Jeffery Macubin, Melissa Schubeck, Marc Schwartzberg, Amy Self, Gregory Sholette, Cassy Smith, William Staples, Deborah Stratman, Kristine Thompson, Oli Watt, Sarah Wild / Jeffrey Grauel, Scott Wolniak.

 

 

 

The fact that the increasing number of shimmering automobiles in the streets goes hand to hand with the propagation of personal ads in the daily journals has prompted the uncanny utopic urge of reversing that phenomenon, if even for one or two days.

 

Ergo, the First Parking Lot Biennale.

 

Around 35 artists were invited to install art projects in their cars, which were parked for one day in a parking lot in downtown Chicago. The parking lot was operational during the time of this event, so many other random vehicles pulled in and out, creating much desired confusion between randomness and carefully controlled projects.

 

Rather than obscure, it would be appealing to try to make evident that many people drive their carfriends for the simple reason that they can’t go to bed with them. There is no doubt that the real carness of a car becomes quite conspicuous in the moment that it is not carrying out its so-called normal functions. A static car in a parking space, with its luscious post-car-wash surface and with the alluring antenna of its stereo system erected, is much closer to its reason for being than when it is transporting the driver’s sister to the hospital as the result of a sequence of unheroic diarrhea attacks.

 

Making artistic interventions with parked cars will thus enhance their aura, exhibiting the public’s dysfunctional relationship with the carness of their cars and melting their metallicized social energies. So, the art will create an appropriate context for the cars in lieu of the cars creating an alternative venue for the art.

 

 

• Jon Anderson, 2001, "Park-in salutes cars' many uses," Chicago Tribune. Follow Link ...