Stadt Klagenfurt

Jochen Traar expands his projects for public space beyond the context of art and makes available to the K08 exhibition Emancipation and Confrontation an artistic guidance system for Klagenfurt. Under the title selbstredend mobil - a pun meaning both “mobile, of course” and “vehicle talking by itself” - the artist puts cars bearing the logo of K08 into the familiar urban environment. These cars parked in the vicinity of several locations of the exhibition are at first not recognized as works of art but seen as advertising space. However, the cars are furnished with movement sensors, MP3 players and external loud speakers. Pedestrians set off the motion detector which, in its turn, starts the MP3-player: the car addresses passers-by talking about art in general and the exhibition Emancipation and Confrontation in particular. Since 1994 Jochen Traar has been formulating his artistic activity under the label of ART PROTECTS YOU. This sentence, first written in Los Angeles in 1996 in 8 ft. plastic letters and transported on the cargo area of 14 moving pick-ups, now forms a guidance system between the various locations of the exhibition in the central part of Klagenfurt.