Edition chez nous 2023

CHEZ NOUS is the latest chapter in a series of walk-in sculptures that have temporarily functioned as artist-run bars, hosting concerts, performances and exhibitions in Los Angeles, Brussels and Vienna. Over the years Christoph Meier, Ute Müller, Robert Schwarz, and Lukas Stopczynski have created site-specific iterations of the Loos Bar, an architectural icon of Austrian modernism designed by Adolf Loos in 1908. From episode to episode, the artists expanded cross-references and abstraction levels, with each iteration adapting the Loos Bar’s proportions to the respective spatial situation. CHEZ NOUS is the fifth variation and becomes a site-independent intervention, a Bar in a Box. It contains a 120-page booklet, a cast aluminum ashtray and three audio cassettes featuring 180 minutes of bar music.

It all started in the garage of the Mackey Apartments in Los Angeles, designed by Rudolph Schindler. During the artists’ residency at the MAK Center in 2015, they realized that the Loos Bar could fit perfectly inside the garage—at a smaller scale. With modest means, mahogany became cardboard, glass turned into mosquito netting and the bar rail became a pool noodle. Even in this DIY version, the charm of the original prevailed, and soon the LA art scene met inside LOS BAR. Two years later, a new iteration appeared in the basement of Etablissement d’en face in Brussels, built entirely with reed as a reference to the historic Strohkoffer used by the Vienna Art Club between 1951 and 1953. Because the basement was 44% longer than the Loos Bar, the entire interior—and even the speed of the music—was stretched accordingly. Strohkoffer became STROOKOFFER.

In 2019, a former record store in Vienna resembled the Loos Bar façade and inspired a third iteration, LAX BAR, during the Wiener Festwochen. While closest to the original in geography, it was the most abstract and visually reduced version. In 2021, the MAK commissioned RELAX, a reinterpretation of the Loos Bar façade with three vending machines replacing the entrance portal. The bar as social space disappeared, replaced by automated distribution. The fridges inside the vending machines were acoustically amplified and became the central sound body of the installation.

(Fig.1–8)
Custom transparent thermo-formed PET case with cardboard-reinforced cover
Custom aluminium cast ashtray, approx. 8.5 × 1.5 × 5.5 cm
Booklet, 120 pages, 21 × 10 cm
Three audio cassettes (Recollection, Sad Hour, Alone Together in a Bar)

Images: Gregor Titze