Satirical Product or Art as Commodity?

The product Garrison Gunter is offering the masses, iSurvive “Interpersonal Radiation Transmission Device,” a plastic mirror etched with Morse code, is readable from the backside in order to use the reflective side to communicate in outmoded, IN-Network style. It’s shape directly referential of the iPhone, the piece comments on the futility of keeping up to date with the most recent technology and networked communication, as well as the problem of art as commodity, Gunter tells us.

The packaging, albeit well designed for an item one might find at Spencer’s, is not reflective of a collectible, as the limited first edition number and artist’s initials insists that it is. The price Gunter offers us, just $99 to have our own satirical communication device dictates attainability in conflict with its materiality, and, conceivably, audience and interaction. Clear plastic sleeves and recycled cardstock folded and stapled to seal the package, displayed on slat board and Virgin Records style hanging system typical of a South Park figurine rather than a collectible worthy of it’s $99 price. One might argue that such collectibles as comic books have similar unsubstantial packaging, however these items already contain a history outside of the object itself, and it is the history that the object is representative of, that influences its worth in price. Gunter’s objects do not have this history.

This piece tightrope walks the line of art and design ever so closely; it does well as a clever item, with clever design and tag lines, effectively utilizing the language of retail, one so pervasive in our culture, thus easily understood by a larger audience. Then the question becomes, what moves this object from satirical product to commentary on art as commodity? The placement of the iSurvive product line within a gallery space is the only answer we are given, and this answer is not enough to sustain this argument posed by Gunter. If iSurvive, is, in fact commentary on art as commodity, then more is needed to complicating its one-sidedness, a shift towards middle ground rather than almost entirely toward product.