A
World Drowning in Objects
‘We have rowing machines we never exercise
on, dining tables we don’t eat at, and triple ovens we don’t cook in. They are our toys: consolations for the
unremitting pressures of acquiring the means to buy them and which infantilize us in our pursuit of them.’
We are reduced to our capitalist rolls as
we go to work each day to feed the system of over production and reproduction
that we then long to consume. We are a
society of conditioned loyal servants accepting of the media led dictation of
our desires. Consuming objects is the
only path to actualization, as demonstrated by Sudjic’s realistic description
of our belief in the ability for electric appliances to equal domestic fulfilment. The pursuit of these personal and social
‘fulfillments’ mean that the consumption is ongoing. To prove ones self to ones friend or neighbor
we must own each of the objects advertised as life enhancing possessions plus
the upgrades that quickly follow them. Product
maturity convinces the consumer that the latest version of their possession is
a necessary and therefore justifiable upgrade, thus the mass consumption and consumer manipulation expands.
‘Geese
panic at the approach of a man with a metal funnel ready to be rammed forcibly
down their throats, while we fight for a turn at the trough’.
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| (Barbara Kruger 1987) |
‘The intricacies of model numbers,
provenance and pedigree sustain a drooling pornography
that fetishes’. The barbaric mass overconsumption is as a result of what Sudjic described as: ‘the shallow but
sharp emotional tug that the manufacture of want exerts on us.’
Sudjic cites John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’
exploring the rout of capitalisms reign.
‘He made a distinction between ‘real’ objects and what he saw as the
manipulations of capitalism that make us want to consume them. ‘It is important… not to confuse publicity
with the pleasure of benefits to be enjoyed from the things it advertises,’ he
argued. ‘Publicity begins by working on natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of
pleasure.’’ Capitalism both feeds
off and strives to gain publicity, promoting an ideology of promises to fulfill
the desires of basic humanistic want, by providing physical objects of
representation. E.g. to borrow one of Sudjic’s many examples, the state of the
art range cooker represents the good housewife and thus a successful personal
life, and we could go as far as to say: the suggestion of the ‘ideal’ family
unit. The result is that the desire
itself is lost, and our pursuit is redirected towards ownership of the
representation as a signifier to others, reassuring both parties (ourselves and
them (whoever ‘they’ may be)) that we are successful in achieving the desires
that we neglected to have in the first place.
‘Capitalism
survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own
interests as narrowly as possible. This
was once achieved by extensive deprivation.
Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a
false standard of what is, and what is not desirable.’
The modern ‘Art World’ embodies the
falsified standards of the ‘desirable’ that Sudjic is referring to. The manufacture of want underpins the
negativity associated with a lack of high culture in proletarian classes,
because we desire the relationship with high culture that we are offered
through art works that meet the ‘standard’.
However the standard of the desirable relies heavily upon the popular,
in that popular art works outside of the art establishment are extracted from
pop culture and re-represented as elitist ‘desirables’. Graffiti for example, is an undesirable
non-art form until exhibited from within the elitist establishment as verified
“good art”. Hereby we narrow our encounters
with primary observation and experience to conform our desires in order to
achieve good taste. The parallel art
worlds of inside and outside of the institution remain, as bridges are
consistently built and immediately burned.
By which I mean that the direct outsider art infiltration of the
institution collapses on receipt of the sale.
The creative language of the work is totally reinvented from within the
gallery space to further manipulate the onlooker with the representation of a
connection to every-day-life, and an implied diminished class boundary. Consequently satisfying a manufactured desire
for a manufactured ‘high culture’. Publicity is ‘calculatingly designed to achieve an
emotional response.’
Modern interior design is ‘the triumph of
bourgeois values over an earlier, earthier reality’. (Baudrillard)
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This staircase was designed by HSH Architects
and was inspired from rippling ribbon.
http://www.homedit.com/21-of-the-most-interesting-floating-staircase-designs/
|
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Milan 2010: British designer Thomas Heatherwick presented a chair resembling a spinning top at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan earlier this month.
http://www.dezeen.com/2010/04/29/spun-seat-by-thomas-heatherwick-for-magis/?replytocom=430937 |
We furnish our homes with objects and ideas that are often impractical, favouring fashionable design or innovation over function or necessity. Boxing away all of our worldly possessions to become more minimalist and streamline, our homes begin to reflect the white cube gallery spaces that contain our art. Perhaps our every-day-lives have become private performance pieces in themselves.
‘Our relationship with our possessions is
never straightforward. It is a complex blend of the knowing and the
innocent. Objects are far from being as
innocent as Berger suggested, and that is what makes them too interesting to
ignore.’
