Object ID

Video, HD, b&w, 5:05 min / 2012

In this video, 55 questions are raised which are necessary to inventory an ethnological object by today‘s scientific standards. In doing so, questions about the object‘s type, the material and about the history are in the focus. By means of those scientific methods of measurement, categorization and classification, the ethnological object originates as a provider of certain informations. It is transcribed with a new history which it didn´t possessed in its former context. At the same time, these apparently harmless questions give much more information about the underlying occidental parameter of object valuation than about the objects themselves. They reveal the quite obsessive character which scientific collectorship is always underlying. The questions, which are highlightened with a typewriter sound - similar to volleys of gunfire - try to identify the object, which constantly defies any imagination.