This intervention was made during the opening week of the Biennale when Venice is transformed by the international contemporary art world. Having visited this event in other years one thing was apparent, the local community, that is diminishing radically, are almost invisible, not involved or included with the projects happening in their own city and not asked to voice an opinion. We decided to work with them and one “key street” in the city, the Via Garibaldi which is between the Giardini and the Arsanale exhibition sites.

We involved 18 shop keepers, (cheese shop, estate agent, beauty parlour, opticians, etc). We filmed each employer at work and interviewed them getting to undestrand their life and occupation. The idea was to transform each one of them into artist exhibiting in the Bienalle. The windows of their shops were intervined with either statements demanding a question or parodies of the text underneath art works in museums, using their shops and products as art galleries and art works themselves. This generated hundreds of unexpected vistors to their shops wondering where the artist were...

Alongside this, parts of the texts displayed were tranfomed into big simulated neon signs which were animated and projected at night over the actual shops and other buildings involving the Biennale. The local comunity of Via Garibaldi was everywhere.