2008
15 copies
Signed by the artist and the author
15 copies
Signed by the artist and the author
33,5×28×7,5 cm
13.1×11×2.9 in.
13.1×11×2.9 in.
Objects and printed matters
Artist Ken Lum (b. 1956) and writer Hubert Damisch (1928 - 2017) change roles and swap ideas in this 21st century update of the Duchampian boite en valise. The object, a book and suitcase, contains a meditation on traveling and memory by Damisch, and a selection of objects suggested by Ken Lum, and sourced in Europe and North America. Traveling, writing, thought, and the storing of memory are alluded to in what appears like a surgeon’s kit.
The Roman writer Cicero once suggested locating the points of an orated speech around different objects remembered in a room, in his famous text on the art of rhetoric. In the hands of Lum and Damisch, the difference between objects and writing is elided, much in the way that their symbiotic artistic collaboration has united historically opposed professions.
Objects in box include 1 printed six-page essay, an instruction leaflet, 1 hotel pen, 1 sock, 1 miniature Eiffel Tower, 1 dictionary, a small mirror, 1 nail clipper, 1 black stone, 1 small lock, 1 key, 1 bamboo object, 1 DVD, 1 Vancouver bus ticket, 1 sheet of music, as well as 4 passport photos.
— Ken Lum is a Canadian artist, whose origins as the grandson of an immigrant laborer from southern China, have profoundly marked his practice. Focusing on issues of identity and representation, Lum has developed a technique of portraiture that ranges from photographic images (much of them staged), to linguistically based signage, to monuments and civic sculptures that capture diversity and demographic detail.
— Hubert Damisch was a French philosopher whose analysis of images has spanned from art, to architecture, to film, and the museum itself. Trained in Paris, under Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Francastel, Damisch's practice is known for its skillful blend of historic detail with a sensitivity of perception rendering the philosophical as a poetic act.
The Roman writer Cicero once suggested locating the points of an orated speech around different objects remembered in a room, in his famous text on the art of rhetoric. In the hands of Lum and Damisch, the difference between objects and writing is elided, much in the way that their symbiotic artistic collaboration has united historically opposed professions.
Objects in box include 1 printed six-page essay, an instruction leaflet, 1 hotel pen, 1 sock, 1 miniature Eiffel Tower, 1 dictionary, a small mirror, 1 nail clipper, 1 black stone, 1 small lock, 1 key, 1 bamboo object, 1 DVD, 1 Vancouver bus ticket, 1 sheet of music, as well as 4 passport photos.
— Ken Lum is a Canadian artist, whose origins as the grandson of an immigrant laborer from southern China, have profoundly marked his practice. Focusing on issues of identity and representation, Lum has developed a technique of portraiture that ranges from photographic images (much of them staged), to linguistically based signage, to monuments and civic sculptures that capture diversity and demographic detail.
— Hubert Damisch was a French philosopher whose analysis of images has spanned from art, to architecture, to film, and the museum itself. Trained in Paris, under Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Francastel, Damisch's practice is known for its skillful blend of historic detail with a sensitivity of perception rendering the philosophical as a poetic act.