Cleaning Legend, 2021
Except from some graffitis in the staircase, there are no traces left from the inhabitants of the former « Squat 123 », located in Rue Royale in Brussels. In October 2018, what used to be one of the epicenters of underground and counter culture in the city closed to become, three years later, a student housing and a contemporary art gallery. « King Upkot » is the 25th student housing built by the Flemish company Upgrade Estate and its cleaning staff wear a uniform with the tagline « Cleaning Legend ». By re-presenting the drudgery of cleaning different windows of the very building, the performance ironically appropriates King Upkot’s cleaning staff uniform to highlight the erasure of the building’s heritage and its gentrification. Since it’s closing in 2018, Squat 123 became an urban myth, a ‘legend’.
Except from some graffitis in the staircase, there are no traces left from the inhabitants of the former « Squat 123 », located in Rue Royale in Brussels. In October 2018, what used to be one of the epicenters of underground and counter culture in the city closed to become, three years later, a student housing and a contemporary art gallery. « King Upkot » is the 25th student housing built by the Flemish company Upgrade Estate and its cleaning staff wear a uniform with the tagline « Cleaning Legend ». By re-presenting the drudgery of cleaning different windows of the very building, the performance ironically appropriates King Upkot’s cleaning staff uniform to highlight the erasure of the building’s heritage and its gentrification. Since it’s closing in 2018, Squat 123 became an urban myth, a ‘legend’.