Heavyweight Journals
23 August 2010
Tags: art
Ever wondered what to do with all those back issues? Erik Benjamins, a graduate student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, has used a decade’s worth of October as materials for an art installation. You can adjust the weight of the dumbbells by adding or removing issues.
Dumbbells (October Journals and Hardware, 9” x 7” x 19” each, 2010) by Erik Benjamins
You can adjust the weight of the dumbbells by adding or removing issues.
Or changing magazines. Try pumping Vogue.
For the LRB I suggest ‘Literary Russian bells’. (Although Literary Russian belles might be preferred by some.)
Now why are they called dumbbells? This looks as if it’s a good way to recycle magazines, but books would be better on account of the density. There are an awful lot of MEGAs (Marx-Engels Gesamt Ausgabe) around that would find new life when used as dumbbells, but Marx might find that objectionable.
An example of alienated labour, do you mean? Or reification?