The artist who built this shop is Da In Park in her first year of PhD research in Slade. Her practice seeks out alternative approaches to contemporary citizenship and the constitution by interrogating the artifical boundaries created by the arbitrary enforcement of established law and custom.




This piece recreates the liminal space of the Royal Balcony of Buckingham Palace, which acts as the threshold between the public and the private, as well as entrenching the class divide. By reappropriating the balcony and disrupting its traditional use, she challenges the public's tacit complicity in Britain's national myth-making to create an alternative constitutional narrative.

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There will be a series of participatory performances from 31st May till 3rd June.  They will ask participants to actively partake in the dismantling of the set. The series of events is as in the below.

1) The grand opening of the most regal fish bar!

      2pm -3:30pm 31st May

With each box of freshly fried fish the audience buys,

they will contribute to the quite literal deconstruction of the balcony. In doing so, the installation challenges audiences to more actively participate in the deconstruction and redistribution of the wealth and power held by the British monarchy.





The artist will flog her fishy creations to the audience. Each will contain images of the royal family cut, folded in fish shapes from newspapers. Each box will contain imagery of the monarchy related to the broader briny theme.

And the boxes will be sealed with the ROYAL SEAL OF APPROVAL created by the artist, and participant will have choice to take away the royal fish and chips boxes sealed with the royal cypher recreated by the artist. Through this, the artist invites the royals to deign us with their presence in the humdrum atmosphere of a fish & chip shop, challenging conceptions of space and power.





2) My Royal Wave

: gesturing from on high.



One of the participatory performances will focus on the Royal Wave. With each box that is "sold," audience members will be dismissed with a curt royal wave, just as the monarch addresses the crowd from the Buckingham Palace balcony.



Audiences will then be invited to ascend the balcony to conduct their own royal waves, and share in the spectacle that is typically only reserved for a select few. Live cameras will capture a blown-up live-stream of these waves from the balcony streamed to a large monitor, commenting upon the exaggerated nature of the British public's consumption of even the most inane gestures made by the monarchy.





3) At the bottom of the balcony stairs, initially, the artist will place a selection of items on the balcony, ranging from: litter, an actual serving of fish and chips, and even bikinis. Such items are those that would be considered taboo were they ever to be found on the real royal balcony. They will serve to disrupt the 'norm' created by royal traditions and ceremonies.


Likewise, the public will be encouraged during performance hours to replace her transgressive items with any of their own choosing. In doing so, participants will have greater freedom to express their own individual representations of the balcony, while continuing to engage with its political ramifications - an act previously only accessible to the monarchy.


The public will be free to take photos and selfies which they can upload to social media or share with friends. We will go over this during the show!!



Ultimately, through this installation, the artist intends to create an intermediary space between the public and the private. The items placed on the balcony will desanctify the rarified space on behalf of the great unwashed.



ALERT.
Limited video recordings will be conducted and will be live-streamed during the installation. Audience members can opt out of being recorded by avoiding the right side of the balcony.