Steal My Sunshine, 2021
Steal My Sunshine was a guerrilla-installation performance piece incorporating twenty-four artists works on rentable e-scooters. It is considered both a singlular art work and group show.
Through invitation, each participating artist provided one graphic for one section of the scooter. Rented by Jason Isolini and other artists involved in the show, e-scooters were driven into the gallery. Once parked, a hired professional vehicle-wrapped the e-scooters with the specified graphics.
The e-scooters were held in the gallery through time-based reservations. Participants and audience members subverted user-applications be re-reserving the e-scooters to hold them at the gallery. Once the e-scooters were complete, they re-entered the public realm as the rentable objects.
This show took form as an event including a DJ set, and a barbecue.
Press Release:
“Steal my Sunshine”, the one-hit-wonder by pop-band Len, wasn’t about anything but a three-day bender Marc Costanzo was on when he sampled a key riff that brought the band international acclaim.
Riding scooters along a sun bleached Daytona Beach, Len’s music video represents a mirage of momentary happiness within decline – a short lived career built off the appropriated baseline of “More, More, More” by Andrea True-Connection.
A similar sense of impending loss accompanies the regularity of e-scooters and rental vehicles in the city's landscape. Using the sharing economy’ as camouflage, corporations continue to intrude in the public sphere.
If an art gallery is considered public space what happens when e-scooters are parked inside of it? Do they become artworks? Does the user become a spectator? Does the art gallery become a fulfillment center? The premise for this show is based on these questions.