Product Recall (2007)
Single-channel video, colour, sound. Edition 1/5. 4’ 27”. Courtesy: the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Actor: Morgan Deare. Camera: Peter Emery. Sound: Dave Hunt
In Product Recall, we see the artist in a session with a psychoanalyst who asks her to match from memory a series of advertising slogans with their corresponding brand. The slogans are those of well-known global companies (many of them active as art sponsors), which brand themselves around concepts of “imagination” or “inspiration”. Carey Young’s video captures the essence of the information economy by illustrating how cultural content is co-opted by corporations to define their public profile. Creativity becomes linked to products, which in turn increases the corporation’s value as a cultural player. Product Recall humorously unveils this process by having the artist – traditionally seen as embodiment of creativity and imagination – undergo therapy to address the corporate takeover of ideas.