"International e-commerce has made commonplace the seamless, impersonal transaction of goods and money between individuals from different countries and cultures. Purchasing something via a keyboard attached to a light box involves a sort of sanitary distancing from the potential emotional content of the object being purchased. The psychological distance involved in the transaction can infer a confidence in the product’s clean and safe nature.
The purchaser’s confidence in a product’s sanitary condition can be further assured if the item is encased in plastic packaging. Plastic wrapping forms a cleanliness barrier, making it more possible to exchange items of uncertain provenance.
The objects produced in this Berlin - Chicago collaboration will be vacuum sealed by machine and will feature a grommet in one corner for ease in display, storage or carriage. The objects will be accompanied by true stories of Confession from their owners/originators. The strong emotional connotations of that each object carries will thus be both preserved and sanitized so that the purchaser’s experience of them as aura objects will be mediated by a sanitary barrier of plastic.
The Project plays off of our longings to experience something authentic - either as a participant, collector or voyeur - and our simultaneous desire to be safe and clean. The consumerist desires explored by this project will be fulfilled in the ultimate international consumerist marketplace of today – an eBay store. In addition, selected objects from Berlin and Chicago will swap cities for display in gallery settings (TBD), which ironically may seem to add an additional kind of sanitization.
Below is a detail of the types of objects, and their proposed distribution and display.
The Objects
- Vacuum sealed objects with a grommet at the top for carrying/hanging/storage
- As consumers (especially American consumers) we like plastic bags/wrapping, because it implies that the objects inside are safe from contamination OR that we are safe from the contamination in the objects themselves.
- Items will be sealed with their description included outside the package – aura objects and original stories
- all objects are “confessional†in some way (actual, metaphoric or anecdotal, political etc), the confession identified/ described by the originator.
- The items and stories will be branded with the collaboration’s seal of authenticity.
Display and Distribution
possible installation view
- Distributed on eBay in a US/German eBay store – auctioned off to the highest bidder. This concept uses eBay’s model of marketing reusable/ repurposed objects, described by the owner/originators. The eBay store will be branded as a US/German collaboration, and of course all items will be listed in both languages. Any proceeds will be donated to TransCultural Exchange.
- Distributed/displayed in a gallery in Berlin and one in Chicago (TBD)
- Gallery shows will feature vacuum sealed “dirty†objects from the other country. Americans and Germans are intrigued about each other, not least because of the intense political relationship we’ve shared over the past hundred years. Also many Chicagoans are of German ancestry, as are many Berliners associated in some way with Americans.
