This Pyramid Chair is an object from the Taxing Art project by Beta Tank studio. They created tax ambiguous objects that can be classified equally under art or design categories and sent them around the world. There are specific criteria that define something as a work of art in the eyes of the law. These include process, quantity and functionality. For example a B-side table from the same Taxing Art project is made as it is half hand-made and half industrially made. The hand-made part of the table does not function as a table, thus under German tax regulations, that half must incur 7% VAT, while the functioning side must be 19% VAT…
The free flow of ideas – the ability for concepts to travel across continents, to communicate and provoke internationally, is essential to the process of innovation. Even while the world’s creative industries and studios broaden our horizons and expand possibilities, the realm of bureaucracy – comprising mundane and often obscure trade laws, customs procedures, and government polices, acts as a conservative check on the freedom of experimentation and innovation. Taxing Art project is a buoyantly ironic, clever case study and analysis of the effect of traditional, bureaucratic procedures on innovative work.