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Jeremy Hutchison and More on “Factories”

Let’s go back to the subjects of factories and “Factories.” For the clever project Err, artist Jeremy Hutchison contacted factories around the world and had them produce “incorrect” versions of their products, re-contextualizing them as art props in a “deliberate miscommunication” as commentary on the global economy. This opens up a can of worms. In this can: Duchamp, the ready-made, re-appropriation of an existing object into an art object by calling it “art”… Let’s not get into that. Let’s think… process. If Ai Weiwei didn’t individually paint all of those millions of porcelain seeds but commissioned a factory to do so — as part of the project’s conceit — did he still “make” them? When Phillip Toledano had ordered political propaganda paintings to be re-painted with his face instead of the leaders’ at Chinese factories — as part of the project’s meaning — did he make this art, simply by authoring them and funding the conceptually relevant process? Hmm.