Cataloging at the PGPL

Greenaway's "100 Objects" piece will be used as a template for a personalized cataloging scheme. Each person will develop their own 100 objects-type system, or perhaps competing personal systems can be released into the "market" to see which will win. Celebrities will be encouraged to develop and brand their own systems, and people can choose between Madonna's or Michael Jordan's or Oliver North's or the Dali Lama's or Boris Yeltsin's cataloging systems. Powerful computers will instantly move materials between competing schemes (Madonna's "Whip" = Yeltsin's "Potato" perhaps).

Materials will be shelved wherever is convenient, and individual items will be located by individual magnetic signatures.

Overall, the effect of this is to expose the systematization of knowledge as a social construct, highly personal in nature. In theory, this system would also be 10 times more expressive and detailed than Dewey's system, which broke all knowledge into 10 basic categories.

Image: Exhibition view from Organizing the Exhibition



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