Meet Wajid Yaseen. One of the things Wajid likes most of all is smashing inanimate objects.
Stalking up and down in front of a throng of eager devotees in an abandoned warehouse in Peckham, Yaseen resembles Brad Pitt's anarchic character in the film Fight Club.
Casually swinging a scaffolding pole around like a medieval broadsword he intones the rules of his particular club.
But here violence is meted out to scrap – computer monitors and old fridges – rather than human beings.
This is Scrap Club, a chance for frustrated office workers to vent their spleen against inanimate objects, conceived as a 'fluid' display of modern art.
Part Tyler Durden, part artist, Wajid first point is to enjoin us not to hit each other when we swing our sledge hammers, crowbars and scaffolding poles.
"Is there anything else?" he asks rhetorically. "Nah I don't think so." He takes a enthusiastic swing against an innocent-looking fridge.
I turn to a new friend I had met while waiting behind the steel fence that keeps us from the doomed objects that have been wheeled out. Is there anything he is going to single out in particular?
"There's something quite iconic about smashing a piano," says David Walker, who works in a auction house. "I'd like to throw a TV in the air. Generally I'll go for things with lots of moving parts."
What did he think it was all about? He is philosophical. "Most of us do 9-5 jobs. And most of us dislike it," he said.
"Most of use hate the things that were created to serve us, and I guess that is what this is all about."
Our names are called out of the hat first. Everyone who signs up to Scrap Club gets a 15-minute turn 'in the ring' with the defenceless quarry.
This means that only eight people at a time are swinging hammers while the rest watch in anticipation and politely clap afterwards.
As I put on my builders hat and goggles and pick up the sledge-hammer I feel a moment's hesitation – do I really have it in me to smash all these things?
My first target is a small red plastic kiddie's toy train. Quite low key, I thought. However, while enjoying the irony, something happened.
My goggles had steamed up and I had become an engine of destruction, lashing out indiscriminately at filing cupboards and Flymo lawn-mowers.
A number of computer monitors were thrown in the pen and I was first to them, obliterating them in a thunderclap with a single strike of my sledge-hammer. I was Thor.
The whistle was blown and my arms were heavy with swinging the huge hammer in great arcs. I retreated to a corner of the room and rested, being occasionally dripped on by perspiration falling from the ceiling.
I sighed, guiltily. What amazing revelations had I from destroying those innocent objects? Aside from feeling a bit of a fool, very little else.
'When you destroy a piano with a hammer it symbolises a destruction of high art'
It was the 19th century Russian anarchist Bakunin who believed that the creative urge is bound up with the destructive urge.
Since then artists have been pushing the boundary of accepted forms to try and capture this destructive side to art.
At the forefront is Wajid Yaseen and Scrap Club co-founder Joel Cahen. Together they staged a recreation of a music riot for an installation and had the idea of giving the audience the chance to join in the destruction-as-art.
"There's a strange, fluid installation going on throughout the night," he said. He said that some of the debris may be used as static art works in themselves.
"There were some smashed TV's with the screen put out which were very really beautiful.
"Stick an upside down toilet in a gallery and it causes a massive fuss. When we put these mangled objects on a plinth, like office desks and computers, it takes on a different form. It becomes something really beautiful."
He said that it was strange that people singled out different objects for different reasons. Many people in IT for instance had targeted old computers for their spleen.
"The things that we own will end up owning us," he said. "The computer has become this thing we are forced to sit in front for hours and hours. It symbolises the technologies which demand our attention. It symbolises the stresses of modern life."
I thought back to how my destruction of a child's toy as a platform to a wider-ranging destruction may give a psychoanalyst a fieldday.
Likewise for Yaseen, who is himself an accomplished musician. "A piano has huge symbolism to it," he said.
"It symbolises high art. So when you destroy it with a hammer you can't get away from the idea that you are destroying classical form and classical ideals.
"For musicians an instrument is like an extension of your body. If you have a connection to the piano it becomes like an extension of the body. It becomes like a prosthesis. So when you smash it up it is a really strange feeling."
He added: "I've been involved in various installations before that involved piano destruction and each time I found it absolutely gut-wrenching."
Scrap Club occurs infrequently, often only once every two or four months. Between that time Yaseen and Cahen hire a van a scour the streets of London looking for scrap which has been thrown out.
"We never buy anything and we think its unethical to destroy things that are working," said Yaseen. "Most people pay someone to collect the things they throw out, we are doing a service for London."
Hearing Yaseen explaining the thinking behind Scrap Club it becomes reasonably clear what he and Cahen have been trying to achieve. But what of those who lacked the insight? How many realised they were participating in a dynamic art work?
"I can't impose my feeling of this on others," Yaseen said. "It is a multifaceted thing. For many people it is simply just a bit of fun while others are able to understand it on an intellectual level."
Feeds