On a recent invitation to a mid-show party (Info Centre doesn't do opening parties), the friendly magenta font reads: "We've brewed beer again". In their first news sheet entitled Infotainment, the Info Centre describes art as a "formative, inventive and weird force" - a far cry from the always-alreadys of postmodernism. In a second floor flat, buffeted from London's busy Mare St by a leafy plane tree, the Danish artists Henriette Heise and Jakob Jakobsen have created something called the Info Centre which provides similar relief from the onslaught of institutionalised traffic. The Info Centre is an artistic and social experiment for 2 or more players - depending on chance, choice and the time of the week. Josephine Berry took tea and pictures there.

Crash Media: I wanted to ask you about 'information' and why you chose to name this the Info Centre. Does this take anything from the information technology revolution or distinguish the presentation of 'meaningful' information from that of 'meaningless' data?

Jakob Jakobsen: We haven't got a strict agenda behind the title, but the info part refers perhaps to information centres like libraries or centres for the collection of different kinds of knowledge or material. It's a place in a kind of transition, where there's no end point. When you go for example to an art show, the art work is a form of end point. But here you always get a reference that is pointing further, pointing outside the space. It's more like a processing unit. But we don't rigidly believe in information in the classical sense of being about clear communication. So it's not to be taken too seriously, and we're not a classical centre - we are one centre among many centres.

CM: So is it more chaotic than what would normally be inferred from the word information?

JJ: It's not chaotic. It's subjective not objective. We don't really bother about differences between data and information. What we're looking for are different practices, what people are presenting here in our centre is often material which points to those practices going on outside the centre. And in that way we are an information centre in a social context.

CM: What kinds of practice are you primarily interested in?

JJ: All kinds, but we are artists ourselves and view this as a part of our artistic practice. Our idea is to make space for our activity and thoughts and produce some kind of non-monetary surplus value. We are interested in people who are doing the same, who are defining frameworks and spaces where they can work and think and live and produce knowledge. And that's practice - yeah.

CM: When you say that you're interested in people who are practising in a similar social sense, would you say the distinctions between life and art are being broken down, or do you keep these things quite separate - even though this is both your private flat and the Info Centre?

Henriette Heise: We live in this space, but we found this space because we wanted to find a place where we could make the Info Centre. And you can't see much domestic stuff around - but to us it's the space of our own practice. For us it has been an ideal space.

CM: Ideal in what sense?

HH: It's not a job, I don't have to get here at a certain time in the morning. Stuff like that.

CM: So if something nearby came up, you wouldn't think of doing the Info Centre in a separate place?

HH: No, not for the Info Centre, but we might do something else. The Info Centre does fit completely into these rooms - it couldn't be somewhere else. We also decided that we wouldn't want the Info Centre to last much longer than a year.

CM: Is that because it becomes too ritualised or predictable?

HH: Umm, yes and we don't want to become too institutionalised as well.

JJ: We view it as part of our existing practice, but the most important part is that it's fluid and we can see from our experiences how easily you can close the flow down when you are making a micro institution like this. If you mediate practices you can destroy them.

CM: Where would you say that you've closed down possibilities or made mistakes?

HH: That's quite difficult to say because I think part of what we're doing is progressing and moving on.

CM: So you don't see things in terms of mistakes?

JJ: No - we see it in terms of experiences. You could say that we've made a lot of mistakes but equally we wouldn't claim anything as being the right way to do things. So long as you keep the idea or the vision, then good and bad experiences are both as valuable. But yes we've made a lot of mistakes!

CM: Has there been any history of representing the centre in misleading ways, misunderstandings between you and the visitors.

JJ: I think it's very important for us not to function as a gallery. Our emphasis is on working and exchanging with people and that's the most important thing. But people are all different, and occasionally misunderstandings emerge. And we have to take care not to just represent other activities, but to be active ourselves too. This is the primary thing, and we try very hard not to mediate anything..

CM: Do you mean that you don't want to interpret the work of others for the world?

JJ: Exactly and that's the danger all the time. And we don't make any themes or any titles for the shows - although we do have a spine in what we're doing, we try to keep it open.

CM: What I'm interested in is how you see your own art practice, because you've said that the centre is part of that, but so much of your work is also engaged with presenting (if not mediating) other people's work. Where do you see your work as ending and other people's beginning?

HH: We think it's clear what other people do, so it's not going to get confused. We just define the space, our contribution is quite obvious, like these orange tables for example. People put their stuff on the tables and that's theirs, so there's a meeting somehow.

CM: Looking at this exhibition, this particular one [selected publications, zines and journals produced in London, Sheffield, Utrecht, Hamburg etc], you've supplied the context and you are also engaged in encouraging the public to come and look, party, drink homemade beer.

JJ: Yeah, making institutions for human life, as we call it, is a part of practice. But you have to remember that this is a long term thing, it doesn't happen with just one show. It's ongoing and has been for many years. And in that regard, I think you can't define where your own arguments stop and others begin. I think there are just short periods where practices mix, and then split again, like when we close down the centre. And I think that the practices we're engaged with are so strong that there's no confusion about the borderlines. It's not worth worrying about. Primarliy we are interested in exchange.

CM: When we talked the last time, you mentioned the unpleasantness of exhibiting in art galleries and institutions, and how that kind of exchange does not go further than the installation of the work and appearing at the opening. I'm wondering what your broader attitude towards the art market and institutional art world is.

HH: I think the way the biggest institutions work is just not enough. We try not to be against it in order to simply create some kind of dialectical situation, instead we try to create what's an ideal way of working for us.

CM: So you're not trying to find a resolution with the system. In trying to create this ideal, are you abandoning the existing art system?

HH: Instead of just being critical, we are trying to create something else. We've had these two shows since we started out in April, and compared with my experiences with bigger institutions, it's just such a relief that we have the Info Centre. It's a strong word but I really think it's been mind-blowing.

JJ: I think that we'd like to say that we're not making a critique of the art institution, but it seems that art institutions just can' t deal with art practices. They're only interested in the objects or the people, but not the practices. They're not really into the complexity of it. And I'm not asking them to be interested in it, because it's much better when artists define things for themselves.

HH: Artists or others...

JJ: Yes but we are artists, and I hope that not only artists but other people will define the framework in which they live. Exhibiting in a big institution is a bit like living in a hotel.

CM: Don't you feel that there's an inevitability in how your position and your work will eventually become legitimised and naturalised within the art system - like so many other non-commodifying art practices?

JJ: That's why we're only doing this as a one year project. Then we're going to regroup, because that's what happens and what is happening and you can't stop it. But it's kind of just the skeleton of it that they're getting. We are looking after the show and reading the stuff, and thinking "this is value, art or not", and feeling that it should be accessible for the world, which is why we open our door.

[http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/infoc]

Josephine Berry [josie@metamute.com]