Adopting the format of a museum documentary, Cornucopia is a series of static images and clips that includes scenes of shifting light and colour, rotating ceramic phallic shapes, and drawings, often accompanied by instrumental music. A voiceover narrates the fictional history of The 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion and its destruction by fire in 1977. Cornucopia is significant as it reveals much of the language and imagery that occupied General Idea in the early 1980s, shedding light on the many layers of their self-referential projects. The video also demonstrates how General Idea continued to play with fiction and reality by exploring the invented ruins of the Pavillion in a video format imbued with authority.
General Idea: 13 Works That Changed Our Definition of Art
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General Idea, Cornucopia, 1982
Video, 10 min., various collections