The cannibals' banquet
Master Thesis
2012
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University of Cape Town
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Abstract
In this project I have attempted to determine and analyse my own "mechanisms of filtering, selecting and assembling" (Hoptman 2007: 128). The cannibals' banquet consists of a practical body of work and an artist's book. The function of the artist's book is to contextualise my creative practice within a theoretical and historical context. My area of interest is assemblage and its relation to consumption. A primary attribute of consumption is that it is premised upon the creation of a constant desire for new things. The corollary of this process is a mass of obsolete or 'dead' objects, which are discarded to make room for these recent acquisitions, ending up in scrap yards, second hand shops and flea markets. My interest is in what I perceive as an integral relationship between the origins and development of assemblage and that of a consumer society, since both function within object relations. With object relations I mean the interaction between people and objects as although objects themselves are lifeless, the relationship between an object and a person is animated through the assignment of meaning to an object by a person. In this sense the object stands in relation to the person who projects certain attributes onto it as the carrier of such meanings. The same object could conceivably hold completely different meanings assigned to it by different individuals at the same time.
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Grobler, I. 2012. The cannibals' banquet. University of Cape Town.