Michael Landy

Michael Landy

Michael Landy is a British performance artist who also works in installations.  He was most famously recognized for his piece Break Down, in which he catalogued all 7,227 of his personal possessions, and then had every single one of them publicly destroyed.  This was done on an assembly line, where workers would reduce his possessions down to their basic materials, and then destroy the remains.  Visitors were invited to attend and watch the process.  Another work of Michael Landy’s is Scrapheap Services.  In this installation, pictures of men were cut out of magazines, and then placed all over the floor.  Actors dressed in bright red swept up and disposed of the pictures during the performance.

            I had never heard of Michael Landy before, and I was interested in his ideas about performance art.  Scrapheap Services is interesting to me, but the piece I liked best was Break Down.  I was really inspired by the idea of breaking down objects to their simplest forms.  I also think the statement he made about material possessions with this piece was very strong.  This is emphasized even more by the fact that he made no money off of this performance, and when it was over he was left with absolutely no possessions.