KOLLEKTIVNYE DEYSTVIYA (COLLECTIVE ACTIONS). THE DESCRIPTIONS OF ALL THE ACTIONS, Photo and Video

JOURNEYS TO THE COUNTRYSIDE. VOLUME EIGHT

88. RED NUMBERS (for Yu. Albert)

In a “Globus” supermarket (in Bohum, Germany), using a microphone and tape recorder, Y. Albert read aloud for 15 minutes. He read aloud the prices (only the numbers not the product’s names) of products from a different grocery and manufactured products store.

Then, in a campus of the University of Ruhr, he was asked to listen to a tape recording and write down 105 numbers using a red marker at the bottom margin of an A0 size piece of paper. This sheet was a photocopy taken from the book “Snuff bottles from China”, by Helen White, Bamboo Publishing Ltd., London, 1992 (plate 11). Then he was asked to add up all of these numbers using a calculator and to write down the total using a black marker, writing the figure below the red numbers. The result was – 3148,58.

After this the copy was given to Y. Albert, he was asked to exhibit this as his own artwork and to try to sell it for the total of the 105 red numbers i.e. 3148,58 (marks in Germany, dollars in USA, pounds in England, etc)

Bohum

29 4.2000

A. Monastyrski, S. Haensgen