Sandra shares some insights into how everyday objects can tell a story. She also thinks we have a problem with objects…
It’s funny, two weeks ago I read or better, I saw the graphic novel from Leanne Shapton. She has pieced together chronologically photos with important objects from the relationship between Leonor Doolan (a food writer for the New York Times) and Harold Morris (a photographer). So, instead of reading, you look at each page showing the objects and at the end you will know the short and sad love story about the two lovers. It is a kind of art I have never seen before.
So, I think about the hundreds or thousands of objects at home. Objects from my great-grandparents, grandparents, my parents, my friends and my own objects. These are all solid objects. I cannot count them out but it would be funny telling my story in this way.
But, if I think in general about the really great tools of the last 50 years…There are three things: Apollo 11, the PC and the Internet. Apollo is a solid object, but space? The PC is also an object but if I think about the Internet, what kind of object is this?
Everyone (in the ‘civilized’ world) can afford at any time the object of his/her desire but our problem is that we don’t know from where they come and how the world is connected. Perhaps we have an object problem.
I think our modern time is not so much a time of objects, it’s more the beginning of a new technical revolution in the sense of space and global thinking.
