27: Shop

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| Spring 2003 |

Editors: Rebecca Garret, Deborah Root and Dot Tuer

Contents:

• ‘Price List from the Recycling Box’, Blue Republic
• ‘CHUCKY’, Alberto Gomez
• ‘Creature Comforts’, Mike Hansen
• ‘The Delights and Discontents of Shopping’, Güliz Ger
• ‘Shoes from the Pavement’, Berry Bickle
• ‘The Unspeakable State of Sliced Bread Sandwiches’, Christopher Cozier
• ‘Contemporary Sculpture’, Claude Closky
• ‘This is Your Messiah Speaking’, Vera Frenkel
• ‘The Papuan Queen Doesn’t Shop Here Anymore’, Stevi Stephens
• ‘Window Shopping in the (Evil?) Empire’, David Hlynsky
• ‘The Hare’, Charles Mungoshi
• ‘Shop’, Eileen Sommerman
• ‘The Woman with the Box’, Munya Madzima, Rebecca Garrett
• ‘Siya so’, Munya Madzima, Rebecca Garrett
• ‘My Brother’, Jamaica Kincaid
• ‘Debt, Dollars, Democracy and Dictatorships’, David McIntosh
• ‘Calling the Shots’, Carole Condé, Karl Beveridge
• ‘Surprise Art Center: A Postmodern Experiment’, Luke Bezuidenhout
• ‘Le Derri-Air’, Liberman & Weinstein
• ‘Millennial Spurn’, Tom Sherman

Overview:

A clever and (de)constructive analysis of marketing, colonialism, and the consumption of culture locally and internationally, Shop will change the way you perceive consumer comforts. Topics range from a surprise art centre in Zimbabwe, to globalization in Argentina, to window-shopping in the Cold-War era. A smart, savvy, and stylish issue.

Excerpt:

David Hlynsky, “Window Shopping in the (Evil?) Empire”:

“Shopping synchronizes my heartbeat with the rhythms of industry. It teaches me my place in the social hierarchy. It initiates me into my many temporary tribes. Watching television is shopping, just as reading the news is shopping. I shop for information and knowledge. I shop for validation. Meeting people is shopping. I shop for human contact. Travel is shopping. Shopping is choosing a momentary self out of a ceaseless catalogue of disposable identities. I shop for experiences; for travel and entertainment; for social associations and interactions. Some kind of shopping must always precede choosing. To not shop is to not pay attention.” (60)

$15