Hidenori Kondo:   What do mail-order catalogues mean to you aside from material for your work?

Penelope Umbrico:   Somehow, a few years ago, I managed to get on a list that all the catalogue companies in the world subscribe to and I was bombarded by a plethora of material selling every useless thing you can imagine. I would occasionally look at these catalogues and wonder: who on earth buys this stuff!? And maybe once or twice (to my horror) I'd think: "that's nice". At that precise moment, I realized, there was an identification with something there — a kind of giving in, a willingness to submit to what was presented to me. I became interested in the function of these catalogues and how the imagery they use incites desire. These catalogs are obviously made to sell objects but they present such idyllic, clean life-styles that they also seem to be made for escaping from our own imperfect, messy lives. This escape is intensified by the potential ownership of any of the objects presented there. There is an illusion of control, of choice to determine the "look" of your life. I started searching for instances of self-reflection and escape (mirrors, windows, doors) in the catalogues to address these notions of self and escape as they pertain to the viewer of the catalog.

HK:   I agree with your point that catalogues are an entrance to the escape from real life and think that catalogues are a symbol of consumer culture. Not only mail-order catalogues but magazines, TV programs and fashion advertisements as well. I think they all function as catalogues and provide "an illusion" of control, of choice to determine the look of your life. Almost everything in our life seems to be catalogued.

PU:   Yes, and everything is for sale.

HK:   I hope it's not everything yet. (laugh) The process of making your work overlaps with mine, in regards to the reconstruction of the "self" in consumer culture through the selection and arrangement of pre-selected simulacra. Tell me your ideas regarding the self in consumer culture. How is this different from a Modernist notion of self?

PU:   With the "Mirror" work, I am really interested in what the mirror represents to the viewer of the catalog. The mirror establishes a kind of place behind the viewer, pulling him/her into that space of the catalog, in a sense making it easier to imagine being there. I am excising these mirrors from their catalog room settings, digitally ridding them of their original perspective, and enlarging them to the size of the mirror being sold. They are no longer representations of mirrors; they become objects that function on the wall in the way the actual mirror would. And I am placing this "Mirror" in front of the viewer as a reflection of the self. Obviously one doesn't see one's self in the image in this mirror. One sees all the objects in the perfect-world-of-the-catalog-room-suite, and viewed with the knowledge that one is looking into a mirror, these objects become surrogates for the missing self. I don't think Modernists were very interested in simulations or surrogates. Or in copies, multiples, or appropriation. Their objects were precious, one of a kind, self-sufficient; they still adhered to the notion of masterpiece — and by inference, a whole, present self.

HK:   This work is pure appropriation work. What do you think is dividing your work from appropriation artists like Sherrie Levine?

PU:   A lot of that work was questioning authorship by using images that were very much authored. I am assuming a lack of authorship in the images I use: there is no signature attached to these generic images. But also, in my use of them I am completely de-contextualizing them, changing their meaning, their look, and the way they function in the world. I am involving the viewer as part of the subject matter in his/her experience of the piece, layered with the meaning of the images' original context of the catalogue.

HK:   I think your work incisively reveals this system of consumerism and illusion of choice to the viewer, as an actual experience. I think at the same time that people believe in this illusion, they have to choose, re-arrange and consume from this media: even knowing that this is a pre-selected "escape" from real life, they believe in it to keep their "self" sane, amid the profusion of information, simulacra in consumer post-modern society, where there are no "major stories/values" to assure oneself. Your work-making seems to consciously re-act and reveal this process of "keeping" the self in the post-modern world.

PU:   Yes, and there is a kind of anxiety attached to this I am interested in - the disappearance or the giving up of oneself: of being consumed by the barrage of media in one's life. And there is a kind of desperation in the reciprocated consumption of this media and its mass of accompanying products.

HK:   The Japanese philosopher Hiroki Azuma calls the Post-Modern style of consumption a "data-base" consumption, based on his Japanese OTAKU analysis. He claims that when there are no more "major stories," like ideologies, concrete meanings or value of human life, people determine the value of simulacra by its hidden data-base. If this idea is valid, the original (=copy) can be made endlessly from the data-base. In Modernism, the author was the founder of the original, but if the data-base takes the place of this, what do you think is the role of the author?

PU:   There is a questioning of formalist decision making in a lot of contemporary work (including my own) that is equivalent to a questioning of authorship. The notion of "the death of the author" is something one almost takes for granted within any contemporary art practice. But in this work, as I mentioned, I am not so much pointing to a lack of, or a questioning of, my authorship by appropriating images, but to a lack of authorship in the images I am appropriating. So, yes, these images are "data-base" images in Azuma's sense. They are dependent on their authorless-ness to be believable - these places seem like they just "are" (though a great deal of thought goes into making them, obviously). These catalogues/magazines are representing, and in some cases involved in the production of, our contemporary myths. They deliver all the longed-for fantasies of grand narrative love- success- happiness- adventure- comfort- family- well-being... etc.

HK:   Azuma's idea of "data-base" exists anonymously behind those catalogues. Azuma claims that people are dividing consumption into two levels: the level of simulacra (products in catalogues) and the level of database (invisible). He claims that people consume the simulacra on the surface dependent on the assumed invisible data-base behind.

PU:   Yes, well the catalogue's delivery of this myth is always subtextual - below the surface of all the seductive, irresistible products for sale. It fulfills a lack of the impossible, idealized narratives in one's life, but does so vicariously, through these idealized spaces and objects.

HK:   The images in the catalogues are meant to catch attention with their beauty but I feel your appropriations also have a formal beauty that have something to do with the emptiness of your images. Do you think there is a relationship between emptiness and beauty? Or, what is beauty to you?

PU:   I don't feel beauty is necessarily empty. But maybe it's always something one can project one's self into. And implicit in that, at its extreme, is a possible lack of idiosyncrasy, oddness, character, etc. I think it's safe to say that the emptiness one might attribute to such a lack of particularity is compensated by an ability to project oneself into the image. The catalogues utilize this strategy by providing seductive spaces we want to immerse ourselves in, and by filling those spaces with a myriad of objects to pique our desire. The mirrors in these catalogs function as peripheral devices to elicit desire. I turn them into objects of desire themselves — and they come with all the strategies of seduction from the original source. But in the experience of absence of self in front of the mirror, theoretically one is witnessing one's own erasure. So I am addressing emptiness as well as presenting it.

HK:   It's interesting, your idea of beauty in its extreme having a possible lack of idiosyncrasy, oddness, character, etc, and that that is the strategy of catalogues. You use the same strategy, but do so in order to make the viewer experience their erasure of self!!

PU:   Yes, which, with this work, I am saying is happening anyway.

HK:   Who is your ideal audience, if not only limited to the art-world?

PU:   I'd love to put these into a shopping mall somewhere.

HK:   I think that's a great place to show this work!

PU:   More of a site-specific installation than a show — I imagine them surreptitiously placed in show rooms, where out of the corner of your eye you think you are seeing a mirror, and as you arrive in front of it you experience this little trauma of your erasure.