Shoreditch Shredding Machine Massacre - Stewart Home Kills Book

Videos

Shoreditch Shredding Machine Massacre

see larger video

sourced by Paul Conneally

• 

  Created by Paul Conneally | add comment

• 

  Created by Paul Conneally | add comment

• 

  Created by Paul Conneally | add comment

• 

  Created by Paul Conneally | add comment

UK artist Stewart Home killed his book Down & Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton by shredding it in a shredding machine at FormContent in Dalston, London. "The book" said Home, was "transformed" through its murder into a sculpture and Home left the shredding machine with the shredded book inside at FormContent on sale for a price of £1,000.

Pictures from the Shoreditch Shredding Machine Massacre.

This is the second action of this kind that Home has undertaken recently. In the first action he wore a black terrorist type mask but this time he appeared without disguise willing to take responsibility for his actions should he be challenged over allegations of book abuse.

Stewart Home was born in 1962. He did not follow the art school route to becoming as artist. Home explains:

"One day in the spring of 1982 I woke up and decided I would be an artist. I was twenty years old and thought that art was pretty much whatever those in positions of cultural power said was art. In other words my understanding of art was institutional and I believed various bureaucratic maneuvers were required to transform me into an artist, rather than the possession of some utterly nebulous quality such as 'talent'."

As a teenager Stewart Home was into punk rock and Northern Soul winning several regional and national Northern Soul dancing competitions on the road to becoming the novelist and artist that we know today.

Footage of what is thought to be Stewart Home dancing to The Younghearts 'A little togetherness'

Home formed the Neoist Alliance a front for mock-occult psychogeographical activities with him as its magus and figurehead. Between 1990 and 1993 Home staged an art strike. Some link the psychological effects of Home's well publicised art strike to the partial collapse of the world art market in 1992.

Home is undertaking a series of talks and actions across the UK in April and May starting with Stewart Home meets 'The Administrator' in the foyer of the Cooper Gallery, Dundee, to discuss the exhibition Moving Image From The Attic Archive. For further information phone 01382 385330, or email exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk