Diminishing self portrait

This piece is made up of two parts – a modified Ikea cabinet with a built in paper shredder, and a 30-meter continuous roll of printed paper. When a viewer activates the shredder via a foot switch the print is shredded, falling onto the floor in front of the viewer.

The print is comprised of every-day fragments of my ‘self’, including images of body parts, shopping invoices, bank statements, medical notes, family photos, images of virtual selves (such as Second Life avatars), drawings, avatars, utility bills, photocopies, old photos etc.

The viewer controls the movement of the print through the shredder via a foot switch. To view the print the viewer must destroy it.

The piece is designed to destroy / transform the apparent artwork (the print). I want the process, materials, medium and form to suggest the ongoing unfinished nature of self, that is continually in the process of forming and ‘un-forming’

This project aims to investigate ideas about the self. Western philosophy, psychology and social science propose a variety of theories about the self, ranging from an idealized unitary being defined by rational consciousness, to a psychological entity driven by unconscious impulses, to a fluid, fragmented and socially constructed reflective subject.  Eastern conceptions of the self, specifically those articulated by Buddhist philosophies, suggest that a discrete unitary self is an illusion. This piece explores these contrasting ideas of sel