Rubbish

Currently reading: The Value of Things – Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska (August/Birkhauser, 2000)

(Part 3 of 4)

Part Three: Shopping

Shopping as purchasing at leisure was incepted over 100 years ago. “Rather than merely ‘buying’ something, we are now encouraged to use every object or image to imaginatively extend ourselves: rather than making a purchase, in a sense, a purchase now ‘makes’ us.” (p.131)

On taxonomy: “The 1940s marked an ‘open’ yet classified product display system, receding sales staff and a shift towards self-service in the ‘retail revolution’.” (p.138)

Selfridges’ relation to contemporary art from Warhol themed displays to YBA associations and serpentine Gallery sponsorship is outlined. (p.152)

Container

“Contemporary plastics are perfect modern materials, ubiquitous and constantly mutating to absorb new properties; and yet our level of participation with them is inevitable kept on the level of mere consumption.” (p.155)

18th Century French economist Cantillion on the Paradox of Value: “How can the useless diamond be so expensive and water, which is so fundamental to life itself, appear so cheap?”

“A material as object can do many circuits around the commodity loop, via charity shops, car boot sales and flea markets; but eventually, unless it enters a personal or museum collection, its matter will be buried, incinerated or, in the case of plastics, reformatted. Plastics have the most potential for this kind of prolonged polymorphic life” [although limited]. (p.158)

“The museum offers a kind of quarantine to objects, a refuge beyond exchange with some symbolic resistance to fashion.” (p.161)

Currently reading: The Value of Things – Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska (August/Birkhauser, 2000)

(Part 2 of 4)

Part Two: The Store

Walter Benjamin recognised arcades as miniature models of bourgeoisie world as well as birthplace of modern consumer culture. (Dialectics of Seeing by Susan Buck-Moss, 1989, MIT Press) (p.64)

The conjunction of the miscellaneous arcade and multi-floored shop produced embryonic form of department store.

The Bon Marché model (Gustave Eiffel) fused the otherwise separate functions of wholesaler and retailer – and occasionally that of manufacturer as well – so that the store was able to ruthlessly pursue the competitive advantage of lower purchase price.

Bargain

“Value judgement that something is a ‘bargain’ could spread from on-sale item to infect adjacent items.” (p.68)

Browsing

The establishment of marked and fixed price eradicated time consuming necessity of haggling. Fixed prices totally reconfigured the circuit of consumption. (p.76)

“Floating free from any notion of necessity, objects were no longer anchored by their ability to fulfil an identifiable need; instead, they became tokens in the games of desire played by an increasingly sophisticated young advertising media.” (p.77)

Exchange

Exchange is a fundamental concept for anthropology. “Exchange is the mechanism by which objects are acquired, classified and displayed; it is the means via which economies are made visible and, simultaneously, gain a emotional, monetary or material texture. Exchange is also the means by which values are distributed within a society. Although value is an abstract concept, the slippery nature of terms like ‘beautiful,’ ‘delicate,’ ‘expensive’ or ‘disgusting’ can be given form by material things. Unlike colour, weight, texture or, occasionally, function, these qualities are not properties of the things themselves, but judgement given form through the objects.” (p.66)

“Modern exchange is not materialistic. it is not objects that people rally desire, but their lush coating of images and dreams. Exchange helps to animate objects with value.” (p.76)

Reference to World of Goods by Mary Douglas and Baron Sherwood (1979, NY)

Collision

From 1960s onwards, “The imagined mass of ‘mass-consumption’ had fractured into lifestyle clusters, groups with requirements that could no longer be responded to with a rigid management hierarchy or single exhibition strategy.” (p.114)

In 1980s Britain, during the course a single decade (Thatcherism), state supported cultural institutions faced greater pressure to produce what their audience appeared to want (‘your visitors are your customers’), but without the imperative to educate, merely to entertain. (p.116)

On the convergence of the museum and the store: “ Increasingly commercialised through entrance charges, branded exhibitions and the necessity of wooing corporate sponsors, museums were forced to justify their funding through grants with direct references to audience numbers and educational programmes; to become more ‘rational’ and accountable. They now marketed themselves as ‘heritage’ sites, as quasi-theme parks, full of ‘interactive’ push-button technologies. Much was made of museums’ revenue producing souvenir shops, relaxing cafes, corporate opportunities, promotions consultants, ‘development teams’ and retail tie-ins.”

Browse

The section Browse pairs/groups photographs of museum and store objects.

Currently reading: The Value of Things – Neil Cummings & Marysia Lewandowska (August/Birkhauser, 2000)

http://mfaroundtable.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/value_of_things_intro_museum_pt1.pdf

Preface

Nick Barley and Stephen Coates introduce this publication examining of the two institutions of Selfridges Department Store and the British Museum as a web of links between retail and museum culture (commerce and museology) – art, consumerism and design. The outlined hypothesis is that the department store and museum may be heading towards a convergence.

“The department store and public museum “constitute the most privileged sites within the social organisation of all objects, images, sign and services. Both embody an encyclopaedic desire to render the whole world understandable, classified and displayed for the visitor to consume.” (p.19)

In the context of rubbish, the cycle of consumption is dependent of value assigned to objects which is addressed in this book. “The values attributed to objects are not properties of the things themselves but judgements made through encounters people have with them at specific times and in specific places.” (p.20)

Part One: Museum

This chapter outlines a museum genealogy covering guided tours (to acquire knowledge and souvenirs), the Wunderkammer / Cabinet of Curiosities – small display rooms/cupboards, display models, typologies recorded in inventories, and the Mouseion (repository for gifts to muse in ancient Greece)

The authors note that collections inaugurated desire to be encyclopaedic in the original sense of the word: to offer a ‘complete circle’ of learning.

“Collecting is a powerful tactic for making sense out of the material world, of establishing traits of similarity through fields, of otherwise undifferentiated material. […] The collection relies on a related series of technologies; ordered accumulation, cataloguing, classifying and arranging. […] To collect is to divert an object from any prescribed path or circulation, to place it to one side.” (p.29/30)

On Souvenirs: “Souvenir is a quality wrapped around an object rather than the objects itself. Souvenir gives memory to form.”

This also chapter mentions that accumulated anatomical specimens in the British Museum deemed ‘zoological rubbish’ was burnt in the gardens to make way for newly fashionable acquisitions. (p.36)

On Classification: Classification was originally ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ which later fractured into printed books, manuscripts, artificial productions and natural productions.

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was revolutionary as systematising natural diversity into series of developmental chains triggered reclassification centred on ordered ‘evolutionary’ display sequence.

Range of similarities included function, colour, regional distribution, form, provenance, maker, estimated age.

Exhibition

This chapter outlines a shift in modes of display in the 1860s towards isolating artefacts from neighbouring objects – with neutral backgrounds, vitrines, descriptive labels (title, provenance and/or date of manufacture and brief contextual information) – resulting in museum layout like a book with chapters, subheadings and paragraphs. A total classificatory system usurped cabinet of curiosities and objects as things of wonder (p.45). Once acquired by the museum, objects ceased to have any practical application – torn from system of exchange (p.46).

The Great Exhibition

“The Great Exhibition of 1851 triggered radical changes in the display of things. Mass-produced objects and museum artefacts were given equal status in a feast of public entertainment.” (Products of industry merge with art and entertainment.) (p.52) “The 1851 Exhibition was the medieval Wunderkammer on an industrial scale, an instrument for assessing the equivalence of all values, over all time, through the medium of display.” (p.57)

PROVENANCE: The Archive Show

Mistaken Presence at Greyfriars, Lincoln

12 April 2012 – 6 March 2013

Provenance marks the beginning of a yearlong project of new artist commissions that look to reflect on the nature of storing, displaying and re-telling of information. Each new commission will respond to the archival material shown during Provenance; thus adding to the existing archival material available on the site and creating a new layer of self-reflective historical relevance to the building.

Mistaken Presence is a 12 month curated project that explores the notion of an archive to develop a number of new works that re-look at the histories associated with The Greyfriars building and its original province. Each artist commission responds to an identical brief of uncovering forgotten historical narratives, thus the project both re-looks at the past whilst itself contributing a new layer of history to the site.

Curated by Alan Armstrong and John Plowman.

http://mistakenpresence.co.uk/

I was in Lincoln last night for Cupboard Love at Friary Studios at Greyfriars which featured my audio piece Blah Blah Blah. The archival Provenance project in the foyer space of the magnificent building, which also houses a ground floor exhibition space and artists studios, caught my eye. The “archival findings” cabinet resembles a display of remnants of the building’s former uses, but without any museum-esque object interpretation information. In constructing my own rubbish archive, I’m particularly interested to see how other artists present and respond to objects in connection with this context, and look forward to seeing how this project develops.

Interview with Lucy Harvey

(see previous post for more information)

AB: Why do you work with rubbish/trash/discards?

LH: My main motive lies in collection and from my own need to amass physical mementoes from my travels; the things I collect become embodiments of my experiences of an environment and situation and therefore are valuable to me. What inspired me to use them in my work was the change of context and exclusivity of their symbolism once I had achieved ownership of them and taken them from their source. From this I drew parallels with the contextualisation of museum exhibits and the functionality of objects, and so I play with the visual associations of my finds by reusing them for new objects.

Secondly I am interested in the process of discarding and partial destruction, which I think of as an everyday encounter with chaos and the unknown. This sense of mystery imbues the object with a power and an otherness, it takes away the concrete narratives of an object and leaves us instead with more enigmatic marks that inspire and provoke the imagination. Coming from a silversmithing background I am very focused on the value of process and the legacy of objects, and I use my practice and my own processes to present these to the viewer. I distort and exaggerate these aspects too.

AB: Do you have a preferred term for those materials?

LH: Discarded and appropriated are the ones I use most.

AB: Where do you source your materials from?

LH: Walking mostly, beaches and old Victorian tip sites are my favourite places as they are the best showcase of this chaos and feature things from across the last century. If I am working on a specific research project and residency it is normally through meeting people and asking for their rubbish, I’ve done this with the technical team of the Canal & River Trust most recently, but also a cobbler and a glass recycling factory. Where I used to use junk shops I’ve now switched to ebay – one man’s junk and all that.

AB: What criteria do you have when sourcing your materials?

LH: I think I am looking for the “otherness” of an object, so if there is signs of previous human interaction, or it has visual parallels to themes in my research, or a perceived function that I can re-contextualise. A good example might be the broken bits of clay pipe I collect all the time which all at once carry associations of previous trade and industry, social history, craftsmanship, loss and destruction, and they also hold the uncanny likeness to bone which adds to the narrative barrage.

AB: What processes do you apply to/with these materials?

LH: I use metalwork processes predominantly which draw from my training as a jeweller which, in essence, involved creating structures to house and exhibit valuable objects. They allow me to assemble different finds and bring them together in new composite pieces which re-contextualise the object and explore associative narrative. My work also appropriates processes, mimicking the making behind other hand skills and everyday mending, and I am particularly interested in using these because some of them, one day, will be discarded and lost too. Does that mean I use rubbish processes on rubbish?!

AB: What context do you show your work in? (eg gallery space/public space/internet)

LH: Predominantly gallery spaces but I want to work in a more site specific/ interventionist way in the future.

AB: What happens to the materials/work afterwards?

LH: They have become something new so they are kept or sold.