Introduction

Notes on a consumer product:

1. Manga is a Japanese industrial branch specialising in the production of animated cartoons as well as comic books. The consumers and producers form an inhomogenous group, for example regarding their age. Manga is a simple metaphor for our complex relationships with show and images. The Manga figures become 'tutors', the heroes grow up along with their readers, just like in the novel Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson, where a little girl grows up accompanied by a book which in turn enacts the girl's life.

2. In Tokyo and Kyoto there are two agencies specialised in the production of Mangas which were contacted by us. Since there is a boom in the Manga industry and every single day innumerable stories have to be published, the market has concentrated on the synchronisation of output and delivery. To facilitate production the stories are based on the figures and their characteristics, skills and personal biographies. The figures are exposed by the publishers to situations in which they can demonstrate their applicability on the respective story. These Manga stories are downright fitness programmes. The qualification and quite 'personal' adjustment of the figures makes the creation of new stories possible. The figures mature within the logic of this constantly renewed environment.

The two agencies offer their figures to various publishing houses. What they offer is an image of the figure, a brief turn around and a short psychological description. The price of the figures depends on their ability to convert complex plots into narration. The more complex a character the more easily it can survive any given story the development of which cannot be foreseen. Many figures are sold with the knowledge that they will appear only on one or two pages or for a few seconds before they'll die. The true heroes are very rare and extremely expensive. 

3. To purchase the copyright for one of the cheap figures which without any special qualities would soon be exposed to disappearence means to save them from an industry which condemns them to death. 

4. By purchasing one of these consumable images one withdraws it from the circulatory system of distribution and provides for the figure to become a producer itself. Such an image, normally tied to commercial exploitation, is herewith liberated and can be newly distributed. 

5. To purchase the copyright of an image means to supersede it. Through this process the producer acts on the same level as the recipient. Pre-production and post-production merge into one another.

6. The project is drawn up as a sequel of episodes. Episode I: Philippe Parreno, Anywhere Out of The World will be followed by Episode II by Pierre Huyghe in September. Further artists are preparing to take over. Each of these episodes is a chapter in the story of an image. 

Anywhere Out of The World by Philippe Parreno principally is a prologue of self-reference. The fragmentary figure has been reponed, into a semi-finished state. As a torso it reports on the possibilities it would have had in it's life.