Since 1994 Vladimir Arkhipov has been carrying out an investigation of objects made by hand for solely functional purposes. He began in his immediate surroundings, with his family and friends in Moscow, at first out of curiosity for objects that reflected people’s creativity when faced with a difficult economic situation. Then he extended his investigation, travelling all over the world to collect new objects. Wherever he goes he finds inventions that he feels embody an emancipating force with respect to the overconsumption of mass-produced objects, reflecting what he terms “unintentional folklore”. During an artist-in-residence programme in Bordeaux, he collected objects from the various people he met, adopting a precise documentary approach: he goes to see the object in situ, interviews and photographs its maker, then writes to request the loan of the object for the exhibition. His collection is thus ephemeral, and these objects are examples of an everyday art that is fundamentally non-heroic.