Los Viernes

Los Viernes was scripted as one full day of urban experiences throughout Mexico-City; driving around, meeting people, giving lectures in universities, doing guided museum tours etc. On Friday the 21st Bryssinck & Peeters acted out the script and turned it into a performative experience. Exactly one week later, on Friday the 28th they tried to re-enact this original day as literally and as precisely as possible. They took the same taxi to meet the same people wearing the same clothes at exactly the same time in the same place to have the same conversations and so on. In other words: an attempt to meticulously copy 24 hours of metropolitan and urban reality.

In the video documenting this attempt the two main characters and their collaborators are fighting impossible fights both with the chaotic surroundings and with time itself. The question arises as to what status a fake day like ‘Friday the second’ should really be accorded, whether it can be robbed of its uniqueness and can be called fake at all. Thus Los Viernes ponders on the true nature or value of performance, documentation and film and it haughtily questions the supposedly singular nature of time’s arrow that unquestionably and unstoppably moves forward and onward.

Los Viernes was made for a group exhibition Storage and Display in Programa Art Center in Mexico City in February 2003, curated by Dieter Roelstraete from the MUHKA museum in Antwerp, Roger Willems and Iñaki Bonillas