ERRATUM® 2013
I commissioned factory workers to insert errors into the products they ordinarily manufacture. Each worker had total authorship: I simply asked them to make their object dysfunctional.
Following thousands of confused emails to factories across the globe, twenty-one objects were finally produced. These became the product collection of ERRATUM®, a dysfunctional luxury brand. Here, the objects were subject to the apparatus of commodity fetishism: fashion shoot, billboard advertising, sales assistants, pop-up boutique, online store.
ERRATUM® explores the radical potential of dysfunction within a globalised economy. Subverting dominant notions of use value, authorship and mass-produced vs. unique, it foregrounds the agency of a global workforce in the relentless production of stuff.
This work was triggered by a report about the Foxconn / Apple factory in Shenzhen, China. Workers were responding to the labour conditions by taking their own lives. One employee claimed ‘sometimes he would deliberately drop something on the ground so he could have a few seconds of rest while picking it up.’ ERRATUM® extends his gesture, examining how a deliberate error might offer a moment of freedom within the relentless logic of global production.
Media : Mis-manufactured objects, printed email correspondence, advertising campaign, billboards, retail furniture, performance, HD video
Exhibitions : Paradise Row (London) V&A Museum (London), Saatchi New Sensations (London), Threadneedle Prize (London), Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (Manchester) Kunstverein Wiesbaden, The Art Foundation (Athens), Z33 (Hasselt), Artwall (Prague), Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem), Budapest Design Biennale, Cypriana Majernika (Bratislava), National Technical Library (Prague), Oriel Sycharth Gallery (Wrexham), Division of Labour (Salford) Press: Third Text, Artforum, Ibraaz, Manifesto Magazine, TimeOut, Guardian, The Independent, Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton, Aesthetica Magazine, Art:Review, Another Magazine, The Financial Times, Port Magazine, Creative Review, Icon magazine
Following thousands of confused emails to factories across the globe, twenty-one objects were finally produced. These became the product collection of ERRATUM®, a dysfunctional luxury brand. Here, the objects were subject to the apparatus of commodity fetishism: fashion shoot, billboard advertising, sales assistants, pop-up boutique, online store.
ERRATUM® explores the radical potential of dysfunction within a globalised economy. Subverting dominant notions of use value, authorship and mass-produced vs. unique, it foregrounds the agency of a global workforce in the relentless production of stuff.
This work was triggered by a report about the Foxconn / Apple factory in Shenzhen, China. Workers were responding to the labour conditions by taking their own lives. One employee claimed ‘sometimes he would deliberately drop something on the ground so he could have a few seconds of rest while picking it up.’ ERRATUM® extends his gesture, examining how a deliberate error might offer a moment of freedom within the relentless logic of global production.
Media : Mis-manufactured objects, printed email correspondence, advertising campaign, billboards, retail furniture, performance, HD video
Exhibitions : Paradise Row (London) V&A Museum (London), Saatchi New Sensations (London), Threadneedle Prize (London), Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (Manchester) Kunstverein Wiesbaden, The Art Foundation (Athens), Z33 (Hasselt), Artwall (Prague), Nieuwe Vide (Haarlem), Budapest Design Biennale, Cypriana Majernika (Bratislava), National Technical Library (Prague), Oriel Sycharth Gallery (Wrexham), Division of Labour (Salford) Press: Third Text, Artforum, Ibraaz, Manifesto Magazine, TimeOut, Guardian, The Independent, Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton, Aesthetica Magazine, Art:Review, Another Magazine, The Financial Times, Port Magazine, Creative Review, Icon magazine