The short film Birthday documents a performance by Iván Argote in a lift: he asks other users to sing him a birthday song. Even though they seem surprised at first, they quickly start singing in unison. During this performance, the artist initiates a moment of intimacy and complicity in a place of transit, where people generally remain anonymous and rarely talk to one another.
Following his arrival in Paris in 2006, Iván Argote has made several artistic interventions questioning behavioral norms in spaces that the anthropologist Marc Augé described as "non-places"; "non-places" are places of passage where exchange and encounter rarely unfold, where individuals remain anonymous, isolated, and ignore one another.
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