FedEx Medium © 2007FEDEX R4578. Priority Overnight, Los Angeles-Basel trk# 852237671880852237671880 May 13-14, 2011, Munich-London trk# 75074213793, Jan 2013

'With the FedEx works, the forces exerted on the object in transport are registered. But in both cases the movement or transport of the object generates its composition. For these, I think of it as making an invisible and technologically sublime system directly manifest, to use its surplus energy to some end. With the FedEx pieces, the shipping label becomes its provenance, so its value or authenticity are its surface. This, coupled with the fact that it is a work that needs to be shipped in order to be made links the material production of the thing to its symbolic value as an art object. The more it is seen, the more it changes, or evolves, the more it literally accrues meaning, or value as a cultural object, and the more its surface is layered.'

(W. Beshty, quoted in 'Open Source: Walead Beshty in Conversation with Bob Nickas', in N. Bourriaud et. al., Walead Beshty, Natural Histories, Zurich 2011, p. 107).