Banana

Quantitative study of the banana - session 1 (January 27th)

Value:

- Price of bananas in France = from 0.50 to 1 euro by kilo.

- Bananas imports, average on the 2002-2006 period:

European Union = 39%

United States = 26%

Japan = 7%

Russian federacy =5%

Canada = 3%

China = 3%

( from FAO statistics)

- Banana is the most popular fruit of the UK, before apples. Indeed it represents 28% of all fruit sales.

Originality:

How much is banana unique?

It is the only fruit that can be peeled that way, without any big effort, without any knife or even when you bite your nails. You just have to break the top of the banana and draw it until the peel goes.

There are not lots of fruits that are as long as bananas. Most of the fruits: oranges, apples, pears are spherical or something close to a sphere.

It is the only fruit that is so sweet, not very sour but rather sweet.

That is also one of the only fruit without juice (unless it is completely rotten…) and granular.

That makes four reasons for a banana to be unique...

Signification:

Bananas comes with two obvious significations : a sexual connotation & a link to European colonial domination over Africa and South America (as in Woody Allen's bananas, which takes place in a banana Republic, cold war-style).

Josephine Baker uses this as a legacy for her banana dance, a way to fight racist clichés and also a festive happening. Bananas are cheerful fruit, this is also clear in Kevin Ayers's work. He never misses an opportunity to mention bananas in his sunny and sensuous tunes, as in the song Puis-Je? The cover of the album Bananamour (1973) is also a tribute to the cheerfulness of bananas.

Andy Warhol's cover for the Velvet Underground's first album is much less cheerful. Yet this banana, which comes from a repertoire of everyday-life which Warhol enjoyed to put on front screen, and is attached to vicious sexual connotations. Indeed, the legend has it that the first editions of the LP, once the banana skin is "peeled slowly" to revealed the picture of flesh covered with LSD, a clear incitation to lick it. This cover is so legendary that this banana has taken a symbolic life of its own, often featured in rock's imagery, as it can be seen with the Dandy Warhol album Welcome to the Monkey House (2003).

Notions of Meaning

  NOTIONS OF MEANING

SCIENCES PO – ATELIER ARTISTIQUE 2ND SEMESTER 2010-11

Il ne faut pas bavarder sur l’image mais lister les codes iconiques

(intrinsèques : couleurs, lignes, éclairage, etc.

et extra iconiques, objets, personnages, paysages, etc.).

La rhétorique de l’image, Roland Barthes

Targets

Establish defined criteria around organic and inorganic objects

Use cross-referencing methodology in web research in English

Develop critical thinking while using critical discourse/speech

Introduce major trends & influences in contemporary design and art

Definitions of object

1. a tangible and visible entity; an entity that can cast a shadow;

2. aim: the goal intended to be attained

3. be averse to or express disapproval of; protest

4. the focus of cognitions or feelings; object of affection, of thought

Criteria

QUALITATIVE

MEDIUM

o What is it made of?

o How can it be reproduced using its raw materials?

STYLE

o What does it look like?

o How does it differ from objects in the same family?

EXPRESSION

o What is it used for?

o How does it function?

QUANTITATIVE

VALUE

o What is the cost of production, distribution & sustainability?

o How long does it take to manufacture and where is it done?

ORIGINALITY

o What makes this object unique and sets it apart from identical objects?

o Is this object inviolable, or what, if anything, makes it sacrosanct?

SIGNIFICATION

o How does this object go beyond initial interpretation?

o Does it have a cultural legacy whether it is for the mass, the elite?

NB Unconscious and conscious interpretation exposes cultural stereotypes and preconceived ideas and this phenomenon is intensified in any and every object.

Required Reading:

The Language of Things, Deyan Sudjic

Required Seeing:

Objectified, A film by Gary Hustwit (Helvetica), A Swiss Dots Production

Additional Resources:

Design and Truth, Robert Grudin

Ways of Seeing, John Berger

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin