Vol 3: Reading Things

From the introduction to Reading Things

The substance of our material culture, refracted through the advertising media, is an increasingly dominant site for the struggle to represent an individual's most powerful desires, aspirations and fears. In countries with a sophisticated culture of consumption, we are constantly encouraged to associate and identify, with a bewildering range of things.

From Tampax to Trade sanctions, these consumer choices - if media theory is to be believed - may embody the last remaining coherent space of personal and cultural representation.

Research into the nature of the object has traditionally concentrated on the production and distribution of things by industry and retail. This analysis has taken the form of market research, target sampling, advertising and statistics. Such a particular representation tries to identify gaps for the profitable manufacture of commodities, to effectively locate, isolate and eventually stimulate demand.

Clearly this is a warped perspective, it may account for what, or how many things are in circulation, but it does not begin to offer any understanding of how they are actually used.

The theme of Reading Things lies in attending to things as they fall from the commodity loop into their rich and varied lives. How exactly are objects patterned with meaning and value? How for instance do they begin to trap historically transient -Love beads, Ben Sherman's or safety pins ?

Most of our material world, like the iceberg, lies beneath the threshold of our comprehension. Things flow past and rest silently as a sediment shaping our consciousness. If our experience of time is dovetailed into the representation of the present, the object, like the pop song, can snare the fleeting moment as it falls away from memory.

How people actually utilise things is extremely resistant to representation. Through the diverse contributions presented in Reading Things, the intention is to establish and then play back some of the procedures of use, against tactics for art. Reading Things recognises that it is often only the shift in context, the suspension of utility, that separates the two.

Text and artists projects from Richard Wentworth, David Joselit, Caroline Russel, Lolly Batty, Daniel Miller, Roger Estop, John Cussans, David Dibosa, Rachel Evans, and John Miller.

You can read the essay that intoduces the theme of the publication Reading Things: The Alibi of Use.