Shayne Oliver

Mall of Anonymous provokes a double bind, employing both the museum’s and shopping mall’s undermined conditions. Museums are currently subject to widespread critique, seen as representations of authoritative mechanisms throughout history or as institutions allowing obscure dependencies with stakeholders. While the mall occupied a significant share of public space in the 20th century, this form of architecture is gradually becoming obsolete, leading to the term «dead malls.» At Schinkel Pavillon both typologies of space are intertwined, then charged with the narration of Shayne Oliver’s own biography. Displacing the customs of the worlds of fashion and contemporary art – canonical runway, retail and white cube – Shayne Oliver takes up these relics to create a new space. When Schinkel Pavillon becomes a retail park, obsolescence is introduced. But quite the contrary actually transpires. In the museum-and-retail-apocalypse, Mall of Anonymous creates its own chamber. As a nightclub offers shelter from the restrictive restraints of daytime, Schinkel Pavillon becomes an art world’s counterpoint. The exhibition is exposed as a mall, and a terminal point is reached. Housing new bodies, music, dance and costumes, a restart is provoked. Shayne Oliver’s community-oriented exhibition practice is one that occupies and revises. From a year-long performance residency program and a site of production at Luma Westbau in Zürich, to an attempt at resuscitation of the mall at Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin, Mall of Anonymous creates new temporary points of departure. Or, as Shayne Oliver stated himself «Gentrification leaves no physical space for new, influential ideas to exist or reside. So Shayne Oliver Group and Anonymous Club will be a place for these ideas to have a home.»

—Fredi Fischli & Niels Olsen