Another One Of My Ideas: Broken Products As Art!
A while ago I thought about repurposing misprinted currency by circulating it at a discount (a wonky $1 bill for 65 cents, let’s say). Now I thought about what we could do with products that are found unsafe for public use and have to be pulled off the market: repurpose them as modern art!
Consider Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, which he mounted upside down on top of a wooden stool. The combination of these two items renders them functionally useless: the bicycle wheel can’t move anything because it’s mounted upside down, and the stool can’t be sat upon because a bicycle wheel is mounted on top of the seat. This combination divorces both of these parts from their intended purposes.
Now, apply that concept to a My Little Pony containing lead paint. The toy is intended to be enjoyed by a young child, but it literally poisons anyone who handles it (particularly a child, whose constitution remains fragile and whose wont is to place things in his or her mouth). By virtue of its composition, the item removes itself from its culturally assumed purpose as an object of play, and forces the viewer to recontextualize any and all preconceptions of what defines a “toy.”
What about something bigger and more dangerous, like a car with faulty brakes or an easily ignited fuel tank? Well, consider the work of Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, whose massive kinetic sculptures were specifically designed to tear themselves apart while operating. These self-destructive machines symbolize the temporal nature of life and reality, wherein the art exists not in the object itself but in the performance, and the entire spectacle both defines the piece and leads inevitably to its downfall. A rogue Toyota careening into a cliffside, or a Ford Pinto exploding into flames, demonstrates this role as an ode to impermanence and oblivion.
- reprinted from Talking Out Your Ass Quarterly, Fall 2011.
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