All Catalogs (A-Z)

From Rhizome Artbase
2003
Description

All Catalogs (A-Z) is a text piece that is comprised of the names of all the available mail-order catalogs listed on the internet, 15,194 in total, at time of compilation, in 2002. In its immensity, the text is impossible to read: one must navigate through to the individual letter groupings and can then access some of the sites, highlighting the absurdity of the overwhelming amount of useless "stuff" available for consumption everywhere one looks.

Rhizome staff
2021

All Catalogs (A-Z) is a text piece that is comprised of the names of all the available mail-order catalogs listed on the internet, 15,194 in total, at time of compiling in 2002. In it's immensity, the first page, all 15,194 catalogs, is impossible to read: one must navigate through to the individual letter groupings and can then access some of the sites I have made links to at random. This piece is a comment on the absurdity of the overwhelming amount of useless "stuff" available for consumption everywhere one looks. It grows out of previous work that utilizes images from consumer-mail-order catalogs. My interest in using these images derives from their pre-selection by consumer culture as representative of our desires: of who we are by what we choose to have.

Penelope Umbrico
4 June 2003
Metadata
Variant History
outside link
static files
4 June 2003
cloning
Rhizome staff