Fountain

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp (1917)

You have the found object or “objet Trouvé” epitomized most famously by Duchamp’s "Fountain." Then there are the the lost objects that people try to recover. Are you someone who is always crying out “where’s my phone?” There are those who would lose their heads if they weren't attached to their necks and some who routinely lose their minds. There are valued items that are stolen as is the case with the bike in De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. But what about those things that disappear of their own volition? You can’t find  them anywhere. If you leave your cellphone in your freezer, you may want to discuss it in therapy. Are the things that refuse to show up part of an unconscious deaccessioning project that has yet to reveal itself. No sooner had you purchased Dan Simmon’s Hyperion at the advice of a friend than that piece of sci-fi went into outer space, into an orbit comprising space/time coordinates that were no longer part of your universe.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star