M HKA Ensembles

Installation, 3309 x 9125 x 3309 cm.

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp / Collection Flemish Community (Inv. no. BK007444).

Sometime in 2001, Russian-Ukrainian artist duo Vadim Fishkin and Yuri Leiderman joined forces to create Hotelit. Hotelit is a working hotel room installed inside a shipping container, the outside of which is clad with painted wooden panels so as to evoke the visual impression of encountering a five-storey building (or, more precisely, a giant architectural model thereof): when during the evening and night the light inside the container is switched on, a number of lights mounted on the exterior of the container flare up and form the word Hotelit. Fishkin’s and Leiderman’s nomadic structure also doubles as a tiny exhibition venue, reviving the memory of “apartment curating” and “apartment art” as one of the most energetic and compelling forms of samizdat art production in the former Soviet Union. Hotelit was in fact first exhibited and used to this effect in Fort Asperen near Utrecht; for much of 2005, it was parked outside the Extra City exhibition space in the old harbor of Antwerp, where it also operated as a hotel room.