Potential for Shame

"With the police, it was a question of how to make them vulnerable in relation to what they represent. I thought to myself that maybe I could subvert all these codes about the outward appearance of the police, perhaps by stripping them naked, but keeping their attributes and transforming them into BDSM accessories. It's not about provocation. It's not about shock value. Humour may desecrate but it also takes things to another level."
Aline Bouvy, 2022.

Aline Bouvy initially created Potential for Shame for New SPACE, an exhibition room in a former garage of the Liège judicial police. The large installation consists of seven reliefs depicting police figures, a urinal and four remote-controlled cars. The cars were developed in collaboration with Julien Bouille (robotics) and Pierre Dozin (sound design) and use AI to respond to visitors.

The work explores "potential shame" in relation to free non-heterosexual expression. One's own shame in the eyes of others, but also shame in the normative judgement of the other who is watching. The reliefs call back to different artworks, like Le Monde clair des Bienheureux by Elisàr von Kupffer. This monumental work is the only trace we have of Clarism, a utopian religion in 1920s Germany that promoted gender equality, among other things. The upside-down urinal represents the invisibility of women in the male-dominated public space. By placing the urinal upside down, it loses its phallic symbolism and takes on the shape of a vulva, a "queer inversion" as it were.

The remote-controlled cars that zip around the exhibition space mimic police patrol cars and symbolise law enforcement and surveillance. Their sound mixes the song of the mythical Sirens of Odysseus with the familiar wails of police cars, warning us of the increasing repressive control in society.