Collection of objects and video performances

I am drawn to the question of how authentically a person can meet the world through objects. By an authentic encounter I mean one that rests on a single piece of information about the thing in front of you: that it exists. Every further thing you learn about it compromises that purity. In practice, the most authentic form of such an experience may be available only to an infant, meeting everything for the first time.

But why should an authentic encounter matter? Standing before constructed knowledge and constructed identities, one has a better chance of understanding oneself, and of reaching the most fundamental questions of life — where it comes from, what it is for, where it goes. This project lets me explore what it is to be in the world through a phenomenological encounter with particular objects. My only intention in making this collection is that I believe these things are worth existing. They serve no function and carry no fixed meaning. Some of them may look like a toy, a tool or a sculpture; they are none of these, and it is that missing identity that gives them the potential to offer me a hint of an authentic encounter.

The title is borrowed from Heidegger. He argues that when an object’s functionality is no longer the primary concern, it shifts from being ‘ready-to-hand’ to ‘present-at-hand’. An object that fulfils its purpose smoothly becomes almost transparent: we look through it at what we are doing. When something interrupts that, the object becomes conspicuous and reveals itself, and we begin to relate to it as an alien thing that holds our attention in its own right. It announces its ‘present-at-hand’ nature instead of being a means to an end. The objects in this collection are meant to be met in the same way, because they are built simply to be.