The Messenger evolved through my frustration of throwing 70 City Mags each week into the waste at one apartment complex in Adelaide we look after. One day I was doing my daily rounds of the complex and walked past the newspapers catching a glimpse of the sunlight glistening on the plastic wrap. The interaction of light and plastic caught my attention, suddenly the newspapers went from ‘stuff’ you ignore to, in the words of Jane Bennett,” stuff that commands attention as vital and alive in its own right.”[1]
The messenger brings a sense of obsessive play and activates human associations with the material. Respecting the life and qualities of the newspaper wrapped in plastic, my aim was to work collaboratively with material agency to activate it in some way. I seek to prove that the unwanted is in fact useful and that it might prompt us to rethink our relationship with familiar readymade objects and their associated sensory/haptic memories.
[1] Jane Bennett, The Force of Things – Steps toward an Ecology of Matter, Political Theory, Vol. 32, No. 3(Sage Publications Inc, John Hopkins University, June 2004), pg. 350.