STORIES OF THINGS

This book is part of the artistic research project ‘The Things are Us, We are the Things’ that deals with the theme of culturally coded objects. It is just the small and inconspicuous things of daily life that are closely connected with a nation’s way of living. Despite the cultural standardization that globalization has brought about, a difference between German and Chinese things still exist. What is Chinese about them? What is German about them? How does their meaning change when these things travel into a foreign country? Ten mysterious but typical German everyday-life objects were brought to China and vice versa. These objects were temporarily ‘adopted’ by people in the respective foreign country who had their own ideas and imagination about the strange-looking artefacts. Their new inter- pretations of the possible functions of the things are compiled and illustrated in the little (non-)fiction book in a highly artful way.