“Only a certain kind of person goes to galleries. But everyone goes to the toilet.”

For The Washroom Projects, Swiss artist Jay Rechsteiner has spent months painting the walls of a pub’s toilets in preparation for a cross-arts performance project that brings dance, music, live art, fine arts and spoken word to the public toilet.

The aim of TWP is to develop space away from galleries, museums or theatres by turning washrooms into performance and exhibition arenas. The art and performances created in the TWP can be touched, smelt and felt by anyone and is artistically accessible to the public.

The Washroom Project opens at Filthy McNasty’s, in London, on January 29.

Via The Guardian.

I’m not sure this kind of initiative is going to shock anyone today. Not a month after Duchamps’ urinal has been named world’s most influential piece of modern art. Not when Isabelle Leijn designs urinals enabling women to do it like men. Not when marketeers imagine a radio network for toilets or viral marketing for bathrooms.

Anyway, the “art in the loo” concept is not new.

In 2002, MIT students created You’re In Control (Urine Control), an interactive gaming system for toilets. Video.

For their Pissoir installation in 2000-2001, Allan Giddy and Steven Greenwood, fitted pre-existing urinals in a gallery toilet with sensors to allow participants to draw using their urine. As the urine passed through a light field it was tracked by computer and the resulting drawings were recreated in real-time on monitors in the gallery space. The colour of each line drawing was determined by the pH value of the drawer’s urine.

Women were given a “pissing aid” to be able to participate.
Movie.