Hyperstore
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Hyperstoreis an artist collective that investigates the precarious future of consumption. In 2015, two group exhibitions were made, at two high streets across London. By adopting a visual essay format, Hyperstore used layered works installed at two different retail locations. This in order to deconstruct the mechanics of front and back-end of online stores. The result was a fragmented representation of consumption and distribution. A narrative of the intangible, polished, digital shop front and its contrasting backbone—the world’s largest containers of organised chaos.
Hyperstore was brought together in 2014 while taking part in the interdisciplinary Book Test Unit at the Royal College of Art. This research unit springing from the School of Communication and was a selected group of students from MA programmes in Visual Communication, Critical Writing in Art & Design, and Curating Contemporary Art. Twelve students, invited to explore the future of the book, its condition and move towards a set of new propositions. Set-up to make experimental and speculative enquiries, the Unit’s given points of focus—reading, translation and distribution—quickly grew into an unconventional, exploded view of publishing. By trying out new things, constantly challenging and convincing each other, not only about content but the way things are narrated, the Unit successfully incorporated levels of surprise, entertainment and constructive chaos. Collectively, the students made a comment on the effect that e-commerce has on our perception of consumption, distance and distribution. Functioning as a united critical voice, the Book Test Unit’s multidisciplinary contributors still continue to acknowledge the turbulence of change, at a time when the disjuncture between physical and digital presence is widening and diminishing at the same time. The project has been generously supported by Thames & Hudson Publishers.
Hyperstore are: Stine Deja, Lia Forslund, Roxanne Gatt, Robert Hetherington, Elizabeth Holdsworth, Charlotte-Maëva Perret, Charles Rickleton, Franek Wardynski and Xueling Wang.