Our Desire To Possess Objects

Date Added:
[June 5, 2012]
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Unexplained human emotions drive you to gather, collect and care for multiple things. Or you despise objects cluttering and covering and invading your space. Or you gather and disperse in fluctuations of ownership. What does this trait say about you? What do these interactions reveal of your understanding of objects, or is it something deeper, more concerned with your age, stage in life and state of mind? Here we go again, using objects to make judgements about ourselves…

This is a conversation that took place between Julie Westerman, Fiona Candlin, Jos Boys, Gabriel Badamosi, Galen Riley, Eugene Nyee Macki and Sharon Kivland. It started at 5:00pm on March 23rd 2012, and is still going.

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Listen to recorded discussion

Further reading:

Emotional life of objects

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Object abuse asks the question:
who or what is being abused?

Object Abuse has been set up to provide a platform for people to discuss, provoke and question the very nature and orientation of objects. The aim is to readdress the unquestioned drives of our collective pursuits, to turn the tables on the object-subject dynamic.

This investigation’s relevance is reflected in recent developments in philosophy, shifts in our socio-cultural landscape and is finding expression in the visual arts. This questioning of our human-centric perspective is reflected through current ideas found in the works of Bruno Latour, Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Anselm Franke and others.

The question: what exactly is object abuse is by no means obvious, when you think about it, who is to say the object in question is passive and not active? Also it is worth asking where does the form of abuse originate from? What qualifies abuse, is it quantifiable, can we identify subtler variations? And for that matter; what is an object, or rather can we say what is not an object…with any real certainty?

OA‘s function is to invite a multidisciplinary engagement; to be a forum, a curatorial framework and an archival space.

We welcome expressions of interest and contributions to the ongoing debate.