“LB / DF – LOW BUDGET / Discursive Furniture” is an independent publication or “artist’s book” about the workshop “LOW BUDGET / Discursive Furniture”, – a furniture workshop that was produced on behalf of OCA Norway (Office for Contemporary Art), appropriating a postmodern free design / lifestyle-concept in 2003 – ’04. The design of the furniture, adopted from a post-’68 idea-book published by the Danish publisher and lifestyle magazine Bo-Bedre, follows the design and color, instructions and documentation of the furniture as they were originally reproduced in the original publication from Bo Bedre. The furniture is owned, and is still in use, (as far as I know) by OCA Norway at their exhibition and project room at Grünerløkka in Oslo.

LB / DF – LOW BUDGET / Discursive Furniture | 2021 © Maria Eide Bustnes | Other publications

Postmodern aesthetics and DIY
-The workshop’s conceptualization and the furniture’s examination of postmodern aesthetics and of DIY culture are aesthetically and culturally an example of a relational aesthetics. The furniture relates to a social turn in social art and design at the turn of the century and refers to an artistic response to a historical avant-garde that addresses themes such as globalization; including “a flow of information” and “a notion of fragmentation”. According to Peter Osborn, its «tendency to identify a break with the dialectic of historical and neo-avant-gardes at precisely the point at which it reimposed itself most intensely, moving to a new stage of development». This implies “An art of institutional critique”, or “the function of functionlessness itself”.

Form and design lab
The workshop LB / DF is developing more research on social art and design and
the postmodern free-design concept from the furniture production and workshop at ISP OCA in 2003-’04 is re-conceptualized in the continuation of the project in a new 2017 redesign.

LB / DF – LOW BUDGET / Discursive Furniture
CEWE Photobook Square Hardcover
Production year: 2021
Size: 20.5 x 20.5 cm
Number of pages: 106