Jean Baptiste Bayle, Michael Bell Smith, Lars Laumann, Lina Viste Groenli, Benjamin Alexander Huseby, Nils Bech, Ida Ekblad, Anders Nordby, Dan Persson

- Performances by Jean Baptiste Bayle, Dan Persson and Nils Bech.

Curated by Hanne Mugaas, November 2005, Projekt 0047, Berlin

Everything I do (I do it for you) is a project carried out both in the form of an exhibition and as a one-night series of music based performances. The love song by Bryan Adams was one of the major number-one hit singles of the generation of the participating artists, in this context referring to their artistic practices including notions of music, sampling, imaging and media, internet, copyright and hacking. Coming from or inhabiting these structures, by being present in or bringing the mediation into an art context, the participants move in-between by posing questions of art and context, means of distribution and art versus non-art. Everything I do (I do it for you) also includes a third point, acting as an introduction to the artist's existent work within non-art contexts.

The typing of Everything I do (I do it for you) obtains 260 000 hits from Google, the majority containing the lyrics of the song, downloads and cover versions in the form of ring tones, midi and karaoke. Brandy did a cover. A rumour involving Bon Jovi exists. ¡§How to-¡§ hacks on how to modify the song is of course present. The song has been used and reused, and is made available in different forms, by different means, intentions and aesthetics throughout the Internet. These means of distribution changes the song and the memory of it through re-appropriations and sampling, but also through availability and the distribution itself. Everything I do (I do it for you) was originally a soundtrack. The movie was "Robin Hood- Prince of Thieves". In the case of the exhibition the interest lies in the give and take of culture and how it affects art, art context, as well as what is allowed into the definition of art.

Download the whole essay here.