Late Night Bar/Europa

"It’s the last dance at Bar Europa. We’re all trying to live inside that moment for as long as we can, but sooner or later it’s going to be over, and we will all have to face, with sober senses, our real conditions of life."

Late Night Bar/Europa took its title from the sign of a closed down bar, and took place in three of Loughborough's many empty shop units. Their interiors lit by coloured lights, each hosted a couple dancing slowly and silently in abandoned, messy rooms; ignoring passers-by making their way home from a night out. These were the last dances at the end of the party, living metaphors for the impact of Europe's economic crisis on its young population. 

Images of the work were presented on a series of bus shelters along Loughborough's Leicester Road, accompanied by a text (linked below) written by the curator and writer Will Bradley. 

Marianne Heier lives and works in Oslo. She graduated in 1997 from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Milan, Italy). She is research fellow at the National Academy of Fine Arts (Oslo, Norway). By applying her work as gifts or services on everyday situations, Heier aims to challenge society's conventions on status and hierarchies. A gift can never be neutral, and therefore always works as a destabilising factor. Heier's art projects are intended to activate or charge already existing contexts by introducing new energy, which lead to a concrete physical change in pre-existing situations. By pointing to possible alternative interpretations of existing situations and power structures, she wants her projects to function as a constructive critique.