Ringier annual report 2015

In an approach marked by respectful humor rather than cynicism, the British artist Helen Marten compares the processes used in making sausages with those of journalism. While the 2015 Ringier Annual Report provides its readers with figures packed like sausage meat, it is also quite safe for vegetarians.

On opening the box containing the 2015 Ringier Annual Report, the reader is presented with two sausage casings. The materials the artist has chosen for the annual report book are thus clearly reminiscent of sausage making. There is the muslin, used to shape the sausage meat, and the greaseproof paper, used by the butcher to pack wrap the finished sausages themselves. The artist has also combined photographs taken during her visits to butchers in Switzerland with texts of her own.

The narrow pages and thin paper on which the annual report itself is printed are not dissimilar to receipts from a cash register. Here, too, the sausage takes center stage – as a metaphor for how publishing content is created and distributed.