Things. They serve. They fascinate. They carry memories. They weave communities. They establish habits. They disrupt. They control. They watch us. What do they dream of when we neither see them, use them, nor own them? Perhaps they shed the practical triumph they embody, the industrial seriality that condemns them, or the sheen our desire bestows upon them. Perhaps they slip into delirium when they are nothing more than things cast aside in the world. Then, they deactivate themselves to escape their modest fate. At least, that is what the ones gathered in this room do.

Here they are, waging wild battles—not against external enemies but against their very essence. They suffer from an autoimmune disease: the impulse that destroys them comes from within. It turns them against the function for which they were created; shoes no longer fit, bottle openers no longer open, and the typewriter no longer writes. Their materials contradict their purpose. The instructions that once gave them meaning collapse. And so, with laughter, they transmute into symbols of themselves.

Through their deformities, they pose questions: Who do things serve, and who do they not? What history do they carry? What do they enable, and what do they prohibit? What do they reveal, and what do they conceal? What abnormalities do they normalize? In their nightmare, drama, or comedy, these things are shaken and broken, reconstructing themselves into impossible forms. They have lost their original function. Yet, that very uselessness sets them free. What thresholds open when the common sense that defined them is dismantled? What do things whisper or scream?

Their flaws and failures bring to the surface stifled social symptoms, unresolved crises, the shadows of reason, the gaps between words, and the tyranny of reality. Rebellious, impertinent things that explode in our hands and before our eyes. Things that, in an increasingly virtual world, remind us of the weight of matter and breathe new life into traditional sculptural gestures. These things captivate
artists, making them their most potent language.