DOES LIFE imitate art? Or does art imitate life? The paradox has teased us since the days of Aristotle. Hundreds have played with it — from Dante to Duchamp, from Wilde to Warhol — but none has come up with a satisfactory conclusion. And our postmodern era has added a perplexing new twist. It has turned reality TV into a cultural staple. And the trend is now spreading to the domain of high art. So farewell then, spectator! You are an antiquated figure. Why stand back and survey when you could take part?



Art is not for looking at; it’s for being in — at least, that is what a new Serpentine show of the work of Rirkrit Tiravanija might suggest.

Gallery spaces are occupied by twin replicas of his New York apartment. Callers are invited inside to participate: to take a shower or a nap (it will prove handy for the homeless) or even cook a Thai curry. Anyone is welcome and the fridge is kept stocked.

Meanwhile, up at the Baltic, Spencer Tunick — known for installations in which thousands of participants pose nude and en masse amid urban settings — is recruiting volunteers. Do you have naked ambition? Then bare it and become a living artwork. Go starkers for culture on the quaysides of Newcastle. All you have to do is register (www.balticprojects.org/tunick), turn up and (whatever the weather) strip off.

And what of our great British reserve? Local folk — not unsurprisingly, given their propensity to brave bleak Northern climes semi-clad — seem unperturbed. A survey conducted to coincide with this project suggests that, while the Scots are most wary of going scuddy bunkers, 70 per cent of the Geordies are proud to cavort about with nee clothes.

But which is more perturbing: to lay bare your animal side as in Tunick’s project or to expose your spirit as the artist Paola Pivi is now asking you to do? “Do you know that situation when you were incredibly in love with someone and you lost your mind?” she inquires before inviting you to send her (paolapivi@paolapivi.com) some written memento of the occasion for inclusion in a book.

I know the moment only too well — but then, that will be because I come from the Midlands and so (according to the Baltic survey) am more predisposed to romance. And since romantic propensities are (rather bizarrely) assessed by one’s preparedness to strip off in public to win someone’s love, I am no doubt soon to be smitten by a middle-aged male Aquarian, because middle-aged male Aquarians also, apparently, love prancing about in the buff. Which leads me to suspect that, in the long run, Woody Allen might have got it right. “Life doesn’t imitate art; it imitates bad TV.”

• I HAVE always thought it would be fascinating to work as a chambermaid. I would like that weird advent-calendar view of life. Each door that you open must offer an intriguing vignette: a momentary peephole in to our pastimes and passions, our desires and indifferences, our loneliness and our lust. But this week I spent a night in the Great Eastern, a hotel which, hunkered down amid the tower blocks that surround Liverpool Street station, remained — until its multimillion-pound overhaul a few years ago — a beached relic of the great age of steam.
  
  Prowl the endless corridors of this hotel and you might end up bemused. A peep through the keyhole of room 160 reveals a temptress in a red baby-doll nightdress. Stumble back through the door opposite and you find yourself inside a makeshift nuclear bunker where a bearded man is surviving on a diet of baked beans. Peer into the video monitor at the end of a corridor and you will see a dog padding hopefully along empty passageways.
  
  These are all artworks. It seems that it is not enough any more merely to provide mini-bars, bathroom products and the odd Monet print. A hotel, to compete, must offer intellectual stimulation. It must give world-weary diners something to debate.
  
  The series of site-specific artworks now installed in the Great Eastern are there not only to promote an arts festival that is currently running in Norwich but also the hotel’s reputation as hip. Is it effective? At best the works were barely noticeable. At worst they stamped the hotel with a contemporary brand as bogus in its way as the horse brasses in a home-counties pub. So why bother with the art? Why get distracted from life?

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