Thursday 26 April 2012

Sue Beveridge: Destruction of the Lover, 2012


 

JDA:
Ikea’s head designers were still not 100% sure about the market for steel skeleton storage units when they commissioned this piece. The conversation they had when it was first presented to them was roughly as follows:

“The title, once this goes into commercial production will of course be “Destruktion av vännen”. The legs of course will have to be replaced with either solid pine or laminate birch effects legs. If we were going for the high end market we could experiment with maybe an oak effect too...”

“One second...”

One high powered Swedish business person had noticed a number of flaws:

“Why is there a skeleton on it?”

This statement was followed by the sort of noises that shocked, executive Swedish designers make when death is mentioned.

“We don’t know..”
Someone finally voiced the question everyone was thinking

“Is it art?”

“We don’t know...”

According to my reporter the designers are still unsure if this is a cutting edge magazine rack or art. So am I.

DJR:
A steel skeleton storage unit you say? Well, of course that is a commission for the German market, obviously!
Although you are wrong about the actual application of this item. It’s a sieve for plunging into the Fatherland’s fertile lands, upon which the world’s finest Dichter and Denker walked, in order to retrieve the bones of those Dichter and Denker we got rid of around the 1930s and 40s.
The Germans that operate the sieve then leave the scene and call the remains a Holocaust Memorial, enabling the entirety of the German population to point at it screaming LOOK WE LEARNED OUR LESSON, WE’RE THE GOOD GUYS NOW and then forming and joining peace groups carrying Israel = Swastika signs.

It does double nicely as a magazine rack, though.

JDA:
It definitely does work nicely as a magazine rack although another member of the Swedish design illuminati is reputed to have been particularly scornful of the skeleton, which was found to have been made out bone. The use of bone to make the skeleton has been derided by Derrida as a choice so typical of the early-post-avant-garde design hegemony that he is rumoured to have given up his membership. Brian Sewell is reported to have jumped in to fill the void, although when he learnt of the singularly inventive use of hardened horse shit to create a soul sieve for teutonic sediments he was reported to maintain a stiff upper lip.

Regardless of these trifling anecdotes, which I’m sure DJR will have heard at one of our many convoluted tea parties, this is very much an artwork of two parts.

One part is a magazine rack and the other is a skeleton that has fallen apart. I recommend gluing the two together firmly before it is exhibited again.

DJR:
Yes. I remember one particular tea party where we forgot to glue the Führer’s bones to its soul sieve... now he won’t be resurrected for another thousand years. Awkward!

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