Device: Cassette player

Description: Removing the tape of a cassette to let it freewheel

Video length: 2' 35"

 

Year: 2003

Materials: Cassette player and cassette tape

Electronics: None

Programming: None

Dimensions: 12x10x4 cm
Power: 2 AA batteries

 

“This can be seen in the recent graffiti in New York or Rio. The preceding generation said:”I exist, my name is So and So, I live in New York.” These signs were pregnant with meaning, which even if almost allegorical was that of the name. The recent graffiti is purely graphic and undecipherable. Implicitly it still says: :I exist,” yet, simultaneously, “I have no name, I have no meaning, I have nothing to say.” The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning” The Ecstasy of Communications by Jean Baudrillard, 1988