Prepackaged+Life

=__Prepackaged Life__= =By John Murden=



Literary Artist Statement of Prepackaged Life In society almost all aspects of life are controlled and molded to a specific form. It has even begun that life and nature are also being molded and formed certain ways. For example in genetic engineering, scientists have begun genetically altering animals like Dolly the Sheep. Genetic engineering has been used often on plants. Even before this could be done humans controlled which plants were selected for and which animals mated to produce the desired type of offspring. In essence most things in life are becoming artificial; you can purchase basically whatever you want how you want it prepackaged.

My assemblage box is titled Prepackaged Life because the word “prepackaged” refers to something unnatural and manufactured while life is associated with natural things. Pairing the two words is a use of an oxymoron. In my assemblage box I have a bear in a can, which symbolizes how an animal, which is usually born, is being made to specifications and packaged to sell to consumers. There are also artificial flowers that represent how even beauty is artificial. Plants are modified to be more like what people want them to be. This is also true about people who have plastic surgery to modify themselves and have artificial parts added. There is also a plaster shell to represent birth and how it is becoming more like ordering a product. Recent advances in genetic engineering are making it possible that in the near future, people will be able to select the gender, hair color, and eye color, etc. of the baby. Doing this makes the baby a more prepackaged life form rather than a baby of chance.

Prepackaged Life can be related to //Brave New World // in that Prepackaged Life alludes to controlling the birth of people. In //Brave New World // they create babies in bottles and modify the fetuses to control what type of person will be born. The work also alludes to the painting Birth of Venus. In my work there is a plaster shell that symbolize birth like the shell the Venus is standing on. Only the shell in my art is made of plaster to represent that birth is now more like being manufactured.

I created my assemblage art from junk that I found in room and my garage. One of the main objects I used was an empty mint can and also artificial flowers from a lea. I was intrigued by how the can made me think of packaging and the flowers artificial. They gave me the idea for the main point of Prepackaged Life and provided a start on what else could be useful in the work.