things

documents spread

admin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 17:31:58 +0100

spread - gun, staple
Documents, Brighton 2000

documents cups

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spread - household accessories
Documents, Brighton 2000

documents

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Cover
Documents, Brighton 2000

trade display technology

admin — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:48:03 +0100

Display technology
Przemysl 1995

trade buying

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The Market
Przemysl, Polish Ukranian border 1995

trade market

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The Market
Przemysl, Polish Ukranian border 1995

Vol 3: Reading Things

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:13:54 +0100

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

November 1993

Location

Publisher

Chance Books: London

Designer

Stephen Coates

Body

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.

Description

176 pages, 60 B & W images

ISBN/ASIN

0 9513932 3 5

ArtWords Link

The Value of Things

admin — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:52:00 +0100

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

October 2000

Location

Publisher

an August/Birkhauser publication: London and Basel

Designer

Stephen Coates

Body

Part beautiful artists book, part critical text The Value of Things is the result of over five years research, facilitated by unprecedented access to the British Museum and Selfridges Department Store.

To live in a modern city, is to live in an environment described by an astonishing array of things. Growing mountain of clothes, tools, art, gifts, information, souvenirs, electronic technology and rubbish are piling up around us. Objects are inserted into, and spill out of every shelf, cupboard, display case, shop, home, gallery, museum, magazine, computer monitor and landfill site. Surrounded by a complex mesh of competing 'product narratives' that dispute ownership, contest interpretation, and disagree on value, these vast accumulations of objects are the means by which we make ourselves and our world knowable.

Events in the previous century which led to this daunting state of accumulation, unfolded as the end-game of a revolution which had begun in the nineteenth century. The giant engines of European industralisation that initiated the material avalanche of the modern age necessitated the evolution of massive institutions to both structure and display the energy of production through things.

The Value of Things sets out to explore the narratives of two institutions which perfectly represent the awesome technologies for sourcing, transportation, warehousing, accounting, stocking, display and redistribution of material things. The greatest inventions of modernity, these institutions are the most privileged sites within the social organisation of all objects, images, signs and services: the department store and the public museum.

Although clearly organised around different economic drives, what the department store shares with the museum is the encyclopaedic desire to render the whole world knowable, classified and displayed for the visitor to consume. If the museum inherited its collection and core practices from the previous aristocracy, its driven by a set of values and narratives to protect an image of singularity through souvenirs of the past. In simple contrast, the store holds the promise of a semiotic democracy, played out live amongst the profusion of the present.

But The Value of Things is not merely a task of mourning - it tracks the narrative of the museum and the store through into the newly-diffused territories of the digital age. As we enter the first decade of the new millennium, our traditional play with value has exceeded its previous limits. A principle of value based on the expression of accumulated excess, has far less relevance in electronically connected economies.

While the department store and museum act as a model to structure and narrate previous attitudes towards things, they are also caught in a process of radical transformation - they may even be accelerating towards a strange convergence.

As the store is superseded by out-of-town shopping cities, or its convenience challenged by the point-and-click of e-commerce, the ruthless forces of commerce are subsumed under an image of public service and spectacle. The store becomes a tourist destination dispersed amongst other cultural sites. In turn, as an effect of changes in both public provision and the constitution of its visiting audience, the museum has been forced to aggressively market and license its own collection. Those stored old things, are harnessed as potential new revenue streams via tiers of licensed commercial access. The museum is evolving as a 'brand', competing to control the flow of value through things, as its objects merge with a wider culture of exhibition, our most unique artifacts become seamlessely integrated into the retail present.

224 pages 17 x 23.5cm full colour

to read a review
College Art Association Reviews

to buy from Birkhauser or Amazon

Description

ISBN/ASIN

3 7643 6316 9

ArtWords Link

Reading Things candle

admin — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:31:40 +0100

Richard Wentworth - candle
Reading Things, London 1993

Reading Things crown

admin — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:29:20 +0100

Richard Wentworth - crown
Reading Things, London 1993

things

documents spread

documents cups

documents

trade display technology

trade buying

trade market

Vol 3: Reading Things

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

Location

Publisher

Designer

Body

Description

ISBN/ASIN

ArtWords Link

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

The Value of Things

Sub-Title

Date of Publication

Location

Publisher

Designer

Body

Description

ISBN/ASIN

ArtWords Link

Related Films

Related Projects

Related Publications

Reading Things candle

Reading Things crown