Imagine No Possessions.(Michael Landy performance art exhibition)(Brief Article)(Interview)

Newsweek International, March, 2001

British artist Michael Landy just destroyed everything he owned: from his Saab 900 down to his dirty socks. "Breakdown," his latest exhibit, was set in an unused shopping space on London's Oxford Street. For two weeks a conveyor belt transported his belongings to a shredder. Peri spoke to Landy in the climactic moments of the "performance":

Why dispose of everything you own?

I see it as an examination of consumerism.

What prompted you to do it?

The collapse of communism. Capitalism and communism were foes, but they balanced each other, whereas now it just seems to be unbridled consumption. My project is about exposing that and about exposing me.

What has been the hardest thing to get rid of?

My dad's...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.