A project room based on the unrealised proposal Decoder

Artist Statement

Decoder can be read as an inverted monument to the preferred mythology of a consumer-driven model of market capitalism: that of involving the consumer in the creation of new products, services and experiences.

Nestled into each other, the stack of black trolleys that make up the structure of Decoder become enmeshed, creating a sense of ominous collective purpose that transforms acts of individual consumption into a process of social construction. This metaphor of individual consumption as collective construction feeds an architectural understanding that the primacy of height is a symbolic currency in the ambitions of cities and their marketed images, carefully airbrushed to couch other realities. Part construction crane, part potentially endless obelisk, Decoder is a materialisation of the invisible underwriting to acts of consumption but one which appears as a monument to these acts at the same time.



2009

Excerpted from Provisions, Book 1, catalogue for Sharjah Biennial 9

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 9

Commissioned and Produced by Sharjah Art Foundation