Inventory (1972)

In a sly twist on the methodology of the 18thcentury philosophes who classified the laws and history of the world in massive encyclopedias Baldessari devises and then subverts his own system for cataloguing the world In a matteroffact tone he states that he is going to present a precise methodical inventory of objects progressing from small to large in size Drawing on his own collection of found objects he exhibits and describes a seemingly arbitrary series of over thirty disparate items By undermining the viewers empirical perception video ultimately is proven to be a flawed medium for the indexing and classification of the world