Point of Purchase (2017)

participatory performance

Gelman Gallery at RISD

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Customers are asked to wait in line while they watch a single overworked and cheery clerk manage four transaction windows simultaneously. Each window holds its own logic. The objects of service are provided by the patrons themselves, who temporarily surrender their belongings for slight transformation and improvement. The attendant sanitizes shoes, vacuum seals pocket contents, moisturizes hands, and critiques client signatures. 

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Point of Purchase (POP) augments familiar customer service interactions to reveal their uncanny underpinnings. Echoing TSA procedures, coat checks, and bag searches, POP is a fiction inspired by reality, exaggerating our present condition to prompt examination of the body, property, and identity within capitalist modes of exchange.