Beta Tank – When objects travel
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Design or art? Objects by Beta Tank are difficult to categorise. But sometimes they have to be classified as art or design to determine the tax due when the objects travel and pass through customs. A situation that is analysed and criticised by Beta Tank in the project “Taxing Art”, and the topic of a book recently published by Gestalten. Bags being rummaged through. Cases that have to be opened. A sceptical-looking customs officer asking questions. Most people are glad if they can avoid such a scenario when on their travels. But not Eyal Burstein. Born in Israel, the Berlin-based designer makes a special effort to be stopped at the customs desk and checked when on business trips. Because Burstein, also known as Beta Tank, wants to see how customs officers react to his objects. How, for instance, do they classify the B-side table? A wooden table with one half industrially made and looking like a normal table – while the other half features a surface of layers that have been artistically created by hand. So is it a piece of furniture, a sculpture – or both? |
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Customs officials as design experts
A question to which different answers are possible. Because in every country customs and tax laws individually define what is art and what is design. For cross-over objects, like the ones by Beta Tank, either the criteria for a work of art apply or the objects are classified as a design product. In concrete terms this means that any customs officer can decide whether he or she considers the product to be a design or an art object. And the amount of tax due depends on this decision. In Germany, for example, the value added tax for a utility item with essentially commercial features is 19 percent, whereas art is considered non-functional and is only subject to 7 percent tax.
Beta Tank’s ironic deliberate confusio
It’s a situation that Eyal Burstein considers grotesque. Where does design stop and art begin? Who makes the decision and on the basis of what knowledge? This is exactly where Beta Tank sets in. The question on whether something is design or art is no longer important today. “The boundaries between these two disciplines are becoming more and more blurred”, Eyal Burstein comments. Aiming to draw attention to the discrepancy between legislation and reality he launched the project Taxing Art. Taxing Art means assessing or evaluating art, or the words can be understood to mean taxing art in the sense that art is strenuous and difficult to understand. The project spotlights five products that are equally ambiguous as the title Taxing Art itself: chairs and tables that are hard to define as being art or design and thus sabotage the rules and regulations in an ironic way.
A table with two sides to it
Among the objects that were originally made for the Design Miami/Basel, held in parallel with the Art Basel, is the B-side table. Or there is a table with a top made of 119 small, moving blocks of wood. The Pyramid Table can change into a piece of sculpture at the swipe of a hand. All you have to do is turn over the flat side of the moving blocks. With the pyramid shapes pointing upward the table top can no longer be used as such. Now, in this condition, German law says it is a work of art.
When objects travel
Burstein sent his objects on further travels: to an exhibition in Barcelona, to Istanbul for the Design Week, to Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula and finally back to Berlin. We can now read about the experiences he went through with his accountant, the logistics company and various customs officers in a book that also bears the title Taxing Art – When Objects Travel. In the book, published by Gestalten, we see a very clear picture of subjective decision-making on what constitutes art and design. Otherwise, how could it be that Beta Tank’s Pyramid Table was categorised in four different ways when travelling to four different places? |
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In Barcelona it was a wooden table, in Istanbul it was referred to as “parts that make up a wooden dining table”. In Doha, Qatar’s capital, exactly the same table was seen as an item of Eyal Burstein’s personal belongings. Just Berlin classified the object as a piece of sculpture. Taxing Art is typical Beta Tank work. Because Eyal Burstein creates design as a research project. “I become interested in a certain topic, carry out research on it and try to understand it more using 3D objects“, Burstein says. A philosophy also reflected in the name. Beta, like in a beta version, a test object, and Tank, as in think tank. In contrast to many of his colleagues Beta Tank is not concerned about simply creating a table or a chair. The objects are to make an intellectual process or social relationships visible. And that’s something that doesn’t happen all that often: design that makes us think.
Recommendation
Beta Tank Taxing Art. When Objects Travel. 160 pages, full color, flexicover Language: English ISBN: 978-3-89955-346-8 Gestalten Verlag
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