Bureau+of+Bureaucracy

Date: 1993-1999
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/2000/2000.48A-H_2a.jpg?itok=8z2McUos width="176" height="244" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/bureau-bureaucracy-51098"]] || Title: **Bureau of Bureaucracy**

Artist: **Kim Schmahmann** Born: Johannesburg, South Africa

Medium: various hardwoods, veneers, marquetry, mother of pearl, gold leaf, and brass Dimensions: 96 x 36 x 24 in. (243.8 x 91.4 x 61.0 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of an anonymous donor

Accession: 2000.48A-H || The Inspiration for the //Bureau of Bureaucracy// came from the Cabinets of Curiosities-built in the 16th and continuing multiple drawers for keeping objects considered valuable at the time, such as coins, unusual stones and fossils. These cabinets made me time about what objects we consider valuable enough to keep in our time, and I realized that today those objects are documents- birth certificates, graduation diplomas, licenses, medical reports, passports, financial statements, and marriage certificates. Such documents result from our interaction with the many bureaucracies that, over our lifetime, register our existence, certify our competence, authorize our activities, describe our health and wealth, permit our movement, and sanction our union. In contemporary society, documents have become our precious objects because they not only reflect and define who we are and what we may do, but also what we may become. I thus thought it fitting to create a contemporary Cabinet of Curiosity in the form of a //Bureau of Bureaucracy// which would be designed to display the valued objects of our age- documents- and invite reflection on an important institution of our modern time: the bureaucracy. The term “bureau” in the //Bureau of Bureaucracy// refers to its two meanings: a writing table with drawers, and a place of business where written records are used. I designed the outside of the //Bureau of Bureaucracy// to suggest a traditional, functional piece of furniture. This is deceptive, for the inside reveals- as in many bureaucracies- a far-from-straightforward story. Thus, the outside is intended to look uniform, imposing, and logical, and evoke an impression of solidity, legitimacy, authority, purpose, cohesion, and permanence. I then designed the inside to unsettle that initial appearance. That is, I inverted perspectives, provided a back entrance, included wasted space and created drawers that are curved or too small to be useful, hidden drawers, secret drawers, and symbolic drawers. On the inside of the bottom case, I created a storage system to display the documents that record my lifetime of interactions with bureaucracies. The desk, when slid open, reveals a marquetry of the ancient Indian board game of Snakes & Ladders, reflecting the vices and virtues of life. In my marquetry, I made a few modifications to the ancient game in order to symbolize the game of life. First, the snakes and ladders are intertwined on my board because in life vice and virtue are not always distinct or unequivocal. Second, because life is not linear, sequential, or independent, the numbered squares of my board are arranged in an order that, at first, appears random, but is actually a continuous repetition of a Magic Square, the numbers of which-when added in all directions-sum to the same number.
 * About the Artwork (Official Text): **
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Behind the first door of the Upper Case, is a marquetry of four books. These books represent the dual character of bureaucracy in our lives. Elements of bureaucracies, as do the elements of our lives, both enable and constrain us. Thus, “Power” which facilitates forceful action, can also be overwhelming, and as in this case, can push “Humanity” out of the way. “Rationality” which has supported much of our industrialized way of life, is also sometimes at odds with it, and can appear, as here, upside-down and opposed to “Humanity”. Finally, the fourth unnamed book represents the unacknowledged conditions of our lives- enabling because taken-for-granted, but constraining because not recognized or reflected on.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">To the right of the book marquetry is a model of the Reading Room of the United States Library of Congress. The Library of Congress houses one of the largest collections of documents on the world, and as such represents the empowering aspects of documentation and bureaucracy: information about multitudes of diverse experiences and rich images from around the world through history. I have built the model of the Reading Room as it appears to the public-bright, open, inviting, accessible, visible, participative and democratic. This openness is deliberately opposed on the left with the set of Symbolic Drawers to be found behind the book marquetry- where I have represented some of the common, constraining aspects of bureaucracies, where rules and regulations become rigid and inhibiting, and where things appear dark, closed, inaccessible, concealed, restrictive and obscure.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In the hierarchical arrangement of the Symbolic Drawers we find a false drawer, a bottomless drawer, a glass ceiling drawer, a half drawer, a reflective drawer, Weber’s iron cage drawer, a drawer of measures, a drawer within a drawer, a secret drawer, a locked drawer and a master drawer, which is accessible only through a particular hidden procedure. In addition, this section contains three hidden drawers, which include a variety of codes, coins, tokens, money, jewelry and a time capsule. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The Lower Case includes 20 Document Drawers which hold and display the multiple and diverse documents that I have accumulated over my lifetime of interacting with bureaucracies. I start with my birth certificate, pass through a variety of educational, military, citizenship, licensing, marriage, financial, medical, and business documents and end with a death certificate (not yet completed). The brass pulls of these drawers are arranged in strict alignment, to suggest how bureaucracies see us-through a regimented system of discrete categories.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[[image:imagefour.jpg]] || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[[image:imagefive.jpg]] || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[[image:imagesix.jpg]] ||

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The back of the piece consists of three sections, which are intended to represent separate views of the world, each enabling and constraining in its own way. The upper section with its focus on a gilded center is a symbolic representation of Western Civilization. The centered focus is suggested by the single-point perspective which became dominant during the Renaissance period. The center of this perspective (the vanishing point) leads to a small door which represents the Back Door to the Bureaucracy. The lower section consists of a series of separate yet patterned panels. This is a symbolic representation of Eastern Civilization with multiple, yet interrelated perspectives. Its situation at the bottom of the piece is intended to suggest our contemporary, modernized neglect of these forms of life. Yet, here they constitute the foundation of my piece. The middle section is a marquetry which displays a Column split off from its origins, the Tree Trunk. This represents the contemporary split between the two civilizations, as well as other false dichotomies such as those between mind and body, between subject and object, and between the material and the spiritual. In time, perhaps these rifts will be reconnected. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In my work, I create conceptual art in the form of fine art. Presently, I am using the media of furniture and documents to explore the role of everyday objects in shaping how we live and work. This influence is typically unrecognized, and by juxtaposing these two media of furniture and documents, I hope to challenge conventional assumptions about how such taken-for-granted objects affect our lives.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[[image:imageseven.jpg]] ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[[image:imageeight.jpg]] || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[[image:imagenine.jpg]] ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Artist's Statement: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In my pieces — such as the //Bureau of Bureaucracy//, //Deconstructing Colonialism//, and my current piece, //Apart-Hate: A People Divider// — I explore a variety of interactions between individuals and society, classification and control, and space and time. Each piece is constructed as an object of fine furniture that contains personal and institutional documents that are revealed to the viewers as they interact with the piece.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">My work is inspired by the European Cabinets of Curiosity of the late sixteenth and seventeenth century, and the intarsia work of the Gubbio Studiola of fifteenth century Italy. My work is also influenced by my training as an architect and furniture maker, as well as my lifelong and ongoing interactions with social institutions, both local and global.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Kim Schmahmann (born 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is an artist who currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He creates conceptual art using furniture as his medium. Many of his pieces comment on his British-centric education in South Africa, and the environment growing up there. "Bureau" took six years (from 1993-1999) to create at the MIT Hobby Shop in Cambridge. The piece he is currently working on is titled "Apart-Hate: A People Divider."
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Biographical Information: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Schmahmann Artist Talk <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">schmahmann bureau
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Resources: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Links: **