The Centre for Improved Living

Feeling a bit flat? Life in a mess? Then The Centre for Improved Living at The Hayward is for you. American artist and comedian Marc Horowitz takes over the Project Space in March to transform it into his highly improvised but extraordinary centre. For the exhibition Horowitz will broadcast a live talk-show, Me and You, three days a week. It will be filmed, edited and broadcast on-site, as well as on the Southbank Centre's website. He will be resident for the duration of the show and visitors will be able to participate in regularly scheduled workshops on Thursday and Sunday's that range in topics from 'how to start your own live talk show' to 'how to make killer sandwiches'. When not filming Horowitz will be enticing visitors to the Southbank Centre to become involved in his range of entertaining and quirky activities.

Horowitz will transform the project space into both a television studio set and screening space in which he will broadcast previous episodes of Me & You and host the workshops. The talk show will be taped three days a week, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, with a variety of guests, musical interludes and events. Each show has a topic, from "messing up" to "small spaces," which are taken from Horowitz's Centre for Improved Living blog. This is a talk show like no other, an art world Wayne's World, drawing its inspiration from American public access TV and YouTube.

Horowitz engages with and comments upon the observational, fishbowl nature of our times in which reality TV and talk shows have become a fact of life. His work thrives on a makeshift DIY aesthetic where props, objects and ideas encourage exchanges of laughter, provocation, problem-solving and, ultimately, improved living. From a swap shop 'trading post' to one-on-one life coaching sessions, Horowitz is committed to life enhancement as an art form and describes The Centre For Improved Living as "a collaboration, a think tank, a place to daydream, a place to 'shake it off,' and a place to embrace individuality and the idea that the world around us is a place of infinite possibilities."