a
short Introduction : A
project of existence any and everywhere but somewhere. A
project of existence physical and ephemeral A
project that is to become but already be [life_of_objects]
is a project, which exists mainly in form of a website. It functions
as a collection point, a reference, a library, filled with imaginable
traces, with personal encounters, with ever changing stories. Stories
and his-stories of travelling objects.Those that pass through our
hands in a using, a functioning, a making, a ‘doing’ of
everyday life. Those
that form part of our daily surrounding, daily actions and activities,
rituals and concerns.Those that industries produce ‘en mass’,
those that we want to aquire, those that we need, don’t need,
those superfluous or necessary, those that we keep (for whatever reason
or whatever value of all different value-‘systems’), those
that we loose, those that we find, those that we give and get, stored
or still circulating, falling in and out of sight, used or re-used,
framed or formed, conserved or adjusted. a
_ g i f t Each
object is a gift, a gift from me to you, from you to her, from her
to him, from him to then another her or him. The object is a gift
that belongs to no-one and everyone, an object that changes owner
and home, hands and use. An object that takes on different lives,
that carries silent stories of its passing from hand to hand, home
to home. One that is singled out but yet might not be singular in
its being. a
_ d e s c r i p t i o n As
the object travels, moves, changes, it collects ‘experiences’.
Experiences that might leave its trace as a broken finger on a fork
or a scratch on the porcelain-plate. These visible traces might accumulate
during its moving life until someone chooses to declare it dead. Then
another one might resurrect the same object: The
mini Toyota converted camping bus, which was once bought by my father
in Germany, shipped to Senegal in West-Africa, (where the rest of
the family of five lived 18 years ago), after 3 years, driven through
the west-african desert Sahara up to Spain, ending up in the pretty
little town of Heidelberg in Germany. Where there it stayed with us
until just recently. Rusty
bottom and a moving roof did not pass the German yearly car-check
and so was declared dead. Instead of leaving it to its lonely decay
on those piles of growing mounts of waste, we chose to re-incarnate
it, or rather give it to a different judging-‘system’ to
evaluate its liveliness. The white little camping-van (decorated with
a drawing of mine on the inside of the sliding door, 1995, praising
its name 'Sara-Sahara' and an already so rich-experienced mobile home)
once again got shipped down to Africa. Now surely it is living an
exiting incarnated life, recognising colours and live-liness, of having
become one of those collective taxis for 12-20 passengers instead
of our already, in travelling times, squashed living of 5. I
could surely extend this text to an endless telling of many momentary
short-stories of experiences with and within this now lost vehicle... A
van is too heavy and large to give. It is closer to a financially
valuable ‘material possession’ than an ownerless nomadic
object. So instead I have chosen to follow objects’ life-stories
that are closest to a daily use, small enough to travel journeys of
distance and ‘important’ enough to be kept and cared for. The
descriptions of each particular object, sent or given to the collecting
point, will become the varying manifestation of the objects’
life; made up of those many different ways of describing, telling,
looking, and observing the object in its particular momentary situation. a
_ c o l l e c t i o n Through
the temporary owners’ engagement with that object, its life is
being shaped, re-shaped and to be told, told to detect; detected to
find and continue an endless investigation into that which we might
have just ‘thrown out’, ‘decided to discard’,
‘loved to death’ or never thought of as perhaps becoming
useful ever again. Those
objects that are part of personal and social lives of many beings,
those that are often the core of a moving, a doing, a making, an attempting,
a trying, a hurting, an enjoying, a giving and receiving, a thinking
and a process of discovering. The
objects that I have assembled are some of those, chosen out of masses
of travelling material things, now appointed to be traced. The
collection and collecting point is an experiment. Part
collection, research, investigation, list, index, science, museum,
exploration… this shall become an introduction into this varied
many-facetted [life_of_objects]. a
_ s h a r e d _ s p a c e The
project [life_of_objects] relies on a participation, it relies
on interest and a curiosity, it relies on engaging and sharing, on
me, us, as well as you, her and him. The
project is a starting point to open up to something that will be shaped
as it evolves and has no definite ending nor final aim. It is itself
a journey, a journey through many different journeys, with a space
or site that is not bound to one or the other, here or there; but
a project that shall grow and extend to as many different places,
spaces, beings, worlds and lives as there are objects and their many
different stories and uses. 26
objects have been given\sent\put to\away\out; each one to be kept
for a while, then to be given on to someoneelse. please
send your description of the object you are keeping at the moment
(+its'
momentary position\situation) to: britthat@yahoo.co.uk
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Nr.3-26: in Copenhagen as part of the Cotemplation room project
home
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