The Happiness of Objects

The Happiness of Objects embraces W.J.T. Mitchell's invitation to consider the possibility that objects have their own desires (What do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images, 2005). While Mitchell focuses on the relationship between the image or object and the viewer, The Happiness of Objects will attempt to capture what objects want from other objects, from the context of their display to potential response to their presence. This necessarily involves a mixture of formal and subjective concerns such as space, light, proximity, hybridization, and life expectancy. Vitrines will display documents that examine pose and objectification, dimensions of scale, and mimesis.

In an attempt to crystallize some of the main points of Mitchell's hypothesis, the exhibition proposes The Object's Bill of Rights, a non-exhaustive and disputable list. It is also a prelude to considering the object as an autonomous subject within a larger society of objects. At a moment when human rights seem negotiable, The Object's Bill of Rights is a satirical proposition albeit with a genuine interest in the formal properties and some of the set of relations that art objects engage with.