Paho Mann | Projects

Paho Mann Projects: "North Gateway Transfer Station Public Art Project" (link to view his work)
     The Paho Mann lecture last night was packed!!  It all began with a short introduction, followed by a small examination and reveal of some of Paho's work given by Paho himself.  He began by showing slides of his medicine cabinet and junk drawer art, an intriguing project where Paho took pictures of medicine cabinets and junk drawers of friends, family and strangers throughout the states.  Paho described the project as an examination of individual human consumption, a voyeuristic collection of people's unconscious collection.  Paho described the pieces as a tension between sameness and difference.  Paho concluded that he was most surprised that the work ended up revealing to him, how similar consumption habits of all of his participants were, no matter geographic or economic in differences.
     Paho then showed his Circle K work.  Paho built upon his junk drawer work to examine the individualization of old Circle K buildings.  Paho described the project, as the other, almost like an experiment in exploration and comparison.   I found his systematic research to be borderline brilliant.  Paho merged old maps and phone books with new search engines to methodically map out old Circle K stores, new stores, empty stores and stores that are now new businesses.  I found the work to be less interesting than the process.  Paho described each piece as an examination of our environment moving towards homogenization.
     Paho's next work, and perhaps the most personal was the individual taxonomy and photograph of everything in his apartment, the totality being more than 4,000 pictures and items.  Paho described this part of his work as being an incredibly enlightening experience.  Paho described rather personally that taking inventory of his life in this sense, deeply revealed to him his own consumption habits in a way he never dreamed of understanding. He described this work as ever changing him in the thought process of his own consumption.  This work also began an interaction with computer data, filters, and society.  Paho made a database online of his work, so anyone could come and interact with it by sorting the items in his house by color, size, price, room, item...etc, in order to begin a kind of dialogue about cultural consumption.
     The last part of the lecture and show revealed the culmination of all of his work in his latest project.  Paho took six days at a recycling plant and took 1000's of pictures of recycled junk, put the pictures into another database and allowed the audience to interact with the junk by using different filters to separate it.  His work really reveals a growing interest in recognizing consumption and a growing need for recycling in the community.  I found the most interesting pieces to be the ones with grid overlays of plastic in different colors one over the other and repeated.  Paho and his work made for an incredibly intriguing lecture.
     I found Paho Mann's work to be brilliant and his methodology to be borderline OCD and genius at the same time.  I did have a chance to ask him a question.  I asked him if during the project of his collection of personal items in his home, if there was anything he didn't take a picture of, or anything he thought about throwing out, or not taking a picture for whatever personal reason.  He did respond that personal family photos and artwork in his home, were left out of the project.  I then made a quick personal inventory of my belongings in my head, and asked myself the same question.  The project really made me think about my own consumption habits and being more thoughtful about how and what I really need to buy.   Very, very interesting work, I am so glad that I went to the lecture!!!!