AS Unit 2: Site A Everything I own: what stuff means

Back to AS Unit 2 intro page

Site A (Resources/coursework ideas)

Clothes make the person
Speak that I might see you

Site B

Popular Music - songs that saved my life
In my room: personal spaces
She’s got wheels: transportation as cultural practice

ACTIVITY

If you could choose five items which belong to you to define who you are for other people, what would you choose and why? What do they say about you?

I would choose my house, my holidays, my books and music, some of my clothes and my phone.

Why? Because I regard each of these items as defining aspects of my personality and the identity I want to portray to other people. I am a 50 year old woman - my identity is going to be very different to yours - or is it? Look at the Flickr profile for a young woman called Miss Peach - her I....series, where she defines herself by her possessions, by the contents of her handbag, her room, her music etc. Fascinating. This page is just called "What's in my make-up bag"

As you can see from the image on the left, I like to buy holidays in amazing, mountain scenery usually in the US or Canada, I have a very functional but uncool phone but a state of the art computer and the latest iPod Nano, I read crime thrillers and fantasy novels (although I'm an ex-English teacher!) and tend to buy my music in single tracks from iTunes, from all different eras of music. My house is Victorian, jeans are my favourite clothes,

Do all these things that I have bought communicate the real me? If so, what am I like? Would I be the same person without them?

Click on the image to read a little bit about each item and why it means something to me.

Read this article about the artist Michael Landy, who destroyed all his personal possessions. Here is an analysis of this piece of art in The Daily Telegraph. This is what a friend of Landy's said about his act of destruction:

"What makes this project particularly poignant is that Michael is part of a generation of artists who, like Damien Hirst, has produced so much work and money for themselves. This is quite a philosophical and radical work. We are all conditioned that our material belongings define us in a way, and this is really the reversal of all that."

Try a little test on your classmates - put together a collage of your belongings - as I did above. Print them out and have the class mix them up. See if you can find the person to go with the collage!