Category: Metamorphosis brief

With my idea of creating a ‘Publication of Me’, I thought about the idea and format of an Annual Report. Like how companies sell themselves, including financial reports and showing what they are etc, I could do the same, with me!

I didn’t know much about Annual Reports, so I researched a bit about them…

Definition:

1. An annual publication that public corporations must provide to shareholders to describe their operations and financial conditions. The front part of the report often contains an impressive combination of graphics, photos and an accompanying narrative, all of which chronicle the company’s activities over the past year. The back part of the report contains detailed financial and operational information.

2. In the case of mutual funds, an annual report is a required document that is made available to fund shareholders on a fiscal year basis. It discloses certain aspects of a fund’s operations and financial condition. In contrast to corporate annual reports, mutual fund annual reports are best described as “plain vanilla” in terms of their presentation.

Issue No. 79 / 147 234 – Winter 2010 / 2011

I began looking at how people collect objects, usually because they have some value to them and this idea led me to finding this magazine and using it for research into the subject. Here are some interesting quotes from the magazine that link to my project/ideas:

Introduction –

The word ‘collector’ is used for a person who regroups and catalogues objects linked to a theme. They can be everyday products – industrial or natural – or even works of art.

… a common object – an item – that by its particularity, rarity or what it represents becomes an extraordinary product that should be looked at with particular attention and/or be collected.

There’s an intense & perverse identification that occurs between people and their things. Design Critic. (Cristina Morozzi) –

There’s an intense and perverse identification that occurs between people and their things. The things we love and collect tell our stories truthfully. Words can be guarded and false; things, on the contrary, are honest. They cannot lie. They tell our stories, despite us…by displaying them [we] expose [ourselves].

With collections it pays to be a little bit mad. Design Critic. (Pierre Doze) –

The volume and variety of information and products that fill our daily lives is constantly growing. Whether virtual data or solid objects, we seem to accumulate them almost despite ourselves.

Source: The magazine itself

Cornelia Parker – 1988-9

This installation piece included over a thousand silver objects, including plates, spoons, candlesticks, trophies, cigarette cases, teapots and trombones. They were crushed and arranged into disc shaped groups, suspended a foot from the floor by fine wires. The title relates to the biblical story when Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Cornelia Parker wanted to change the objects meaning, visibility, worth and by flattening them she did this literally. She thought that the silver had more potential when crushed and their everyday meanings had gone. This piece is about materiality and anti-matter.

From: TATE

– This piece has made me think about objects in a different way. How deforming them can give them a different, but still notable meaning.

Man ‘destroys’ life for art

Michael Landy is an installation artist who  got rid of everything he owned for his exhibition in 2001 called ‘Break Down’. He shredded or granulated things from socks to family photographs, leaving him with no possessions for the sake of ‘art’. The reason for the piece being an examination of society’s romance with consumerism.

The title isn’t just about the breakdown of the objects in Michael Landy’s life, or the breakdown of the materials that create them, but it also reflects the emotional breakdown Landy will face.

He made an inventory of everything he owned, from socks to cds, even his car, amounting to 7,006 objects and 10 people were needed to assist in the destruction. Landy didn’t just destroy everyday objects, he also got rid of his valuable art collection too.

From: BBC NEWS

Michael Landy’s inventory of his possessions also included every item of furniture, every book, every piece of food, every cat toy, taking three years to complete the final inventory, containing 7,227 items. They were classified into 10 categories: Artworks, Clothing, Equipment, Furniture, Kitchen, Leisure, Motor Vehicle, Perishables, Reading Material and Studio Material.

He used a large bespoke machine and with a team of people reduced every object to shredded or granulated material. It was on display for two weeks in former C&A store on Oxford Street, London, described as ‘Landy’s consumer nightmare’.

From: Art Angel

Once complete, Landy said: “When I finished I did feel an incredible sense of freedom,” he says, “the possibility that I could do anything. But that freedom is eroded by the everyday concerns of life. Life was much simpler when I was up on my platform.”

From: The Guardian

The Guardian

From: http://spyridongiasafakis.blogspot.co.uk/p/research-paper.html

– Sounds like Michael Landy did an extreme spring clean of his life, perhaps a way to free himself from the consumerism that we are all drawn to. He wasn’t just getting rid of his possessions, but things that define who he is, a part of his identity, gone.

– This links to the theme of collecting and holding on to things we don’t need, but value.

– But did Landy go too far in destroying other artists works? Was this experience really freeing or restraining?