Shopping

What is shopping?Why do we shop?

Where do we shop?What do we purchase?

Where do these things come from?

Where do products come from?

What are products made of?

Artist: Michael Blum

Why might a person want to discover where his tennis shoes are made? What do you think you might find out if you could trace the origins of your own tennis shoes? Who do you think made them? What do you think their life is like? How does their life compare to yours?

By traveling back to the origin of his shoes, the artist reconnects two worlds with very different material wealth.

Connection 1:People create shoes that get shipped out and eventually

bought.Connection 2:

Blum purchases shoes and traces their origin. (Re-connecting shoes with creator.)

Michael Blum

Blum presents his research through video documentation and placing artifacts in plastic bags.

Michael Blum

Artist: Zoë Sheehan Saldaña

• How would your life change if you had to fabricate everything you use daily?

• Which products that you normally use, would you have to do without? 

• How are those products normally made? • How many people do you think touch a

product before it reaches you? • Before global shipping, how did people

get products they needed?

Shopdropping at Wal-Mart2003     Item purchase for $9.94 in Berlin, Vermont    Item re-created as accurately as artist could    Replaced Wal-Mart store with original tags. Bought by un-assuming customer?

Zoë Sheehan Saldaña

Capri with Strapping (Black)

2004    Item purchased for $9.87 in Berlin, Vermont.    Item re-created as accurately as artist could.    Re-placed in Wal-Mart store with original tags.Potentially purchased for $9.87

Zoë Sheehan Saldaña

Artist: Conrad Bakker

• Bakker’s work is a critique of consumer culture, but also functions within it.

• His Untitled Projects are hand-carved, hand-painted wooden objects, each one a unique work of art.

• The carving and painting mark their individuality

• His work questions what is an original piece of artwork and what is a copy.

Conrad Bakker

Untitled Project: Blockbuster (The Corporation), 2006Oil on carved wood16 x 9 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches

Conrad Bakker

Untitled Object: (TRASH) Untitled Project: Commodity Fetishism [Capital]

References

• www.influxhouse.com• www.tate.org.uk • www.untitledprojects.com • www.artnet.com • www.blumology.net• www.zoesheehan.com