The article I applied
into my project was Détournement/Culture
Jamming from the series of reading Society
of the Spectacle. My plan for the project was to mock the actual value of
luxury goods and bring up the audience’s attention to the consumption problem. Since
a logo is the primary symbol of a company, I decided to slight change the logos
and put them on daily products as a construction. In summary, the
project would be five separately installations. The luxury good company would
be: Apple, Burberry, Coach, Godiva, and Swarovski.
Starting
with brief introduction of the reading. Détournment, also called culture
jamming, is a technique Situationists use for their practice. According to the
article, Détournment/Culture Jamming
written by Zack Malitz, changing the cultural image as a way of mocking is
easier to bring up people's attention and stimulate them to think what the purpose
is. Because people are often more aware to the things they are familiar with, a
tiny change can certainly lead to a strong reaction. Détournment is one of the applications
of Situationist. Speaking about Situationist, it was originally established as
an organization named Situationist International in 1957. Even though it was
dissolved after 15 years later, many artists are still practicing its core
concept all over the world.
You can
always see how the crowds are so crazy about luxury products in every selling
season. However, you also see several times a day just how people waste the
things they can purchase easily. Throwing unfinished lunch or pulling ten
pieces of paper towels at once to dry hands then throwing them all to a trash
can seems to be so "normal" that we do not even realize we are creating a
serious wasting problem. On contrast, many people buy luxury products which
have less benefit for daily lives, but they would put efforts to maintain the
products' condition. That is, we treat necessity goods and luxury goods in the
completely different attitudes. We care less about the things we need for
everyday and over-concern the goods with more expensive price. Thus, the goal
for my project is to make my audience be more aware of this problem.
Apple Products
Apple is
one of the most influence companies that have led the world to the new age with
touch-screen technology. Even though Apple keeps developing new products, most
of they are just the devices containing same content but in the different
sizes. Apple Products was a three-set installation. Apple logo was put on an
apple and two bottles of apple juice. I want it to show the construction
between what people waste (food such as apple and apple
juice) every day and what we hardly see people throw them (Apple products)
without any concern.
Human has a long
history of using animal fur as a way to insulate the body from coldness.
However, it is now a symbol of showing a person's social status. In this
October, an animal protection organization Four
Paws launched an online activity against Burberry to save foxes from fur
farms. I made three bands with Burberry logo and its classic pattern on them.
Then I tied them around the fox plush toy's feet, tail and eyes. I thought the
message in this installation was strong and easy to understand. However, the
only problem was that the installation was kind of unique by itself. In other
words, it was more like a single project compared to the other installations
which still had a level of connection with each other.
A Pack of Coach
The Coach
installation reflected the consumption problem of tissue. In every Black
Friday, I go to Coach outlet just to help my friend's to buy bags. I often see
people check out with lots of bags. Coach has a restriction policy about one
person is allowed to purchase only ten bags for maximum at once. The limiting
rule on luxury goods and the wasting of paper products were the inspiration for
this installation, which was a poor-made Coach purse contained a stack of
facial tissue.
The installation
meant to be viewed in a joke. The pony doll I got was a toy from McDonald. Instead
of the horse on the logo, a low-cost pony constituted a sharp contrast to the
lady Godiva symbol that represented high quality chocolate. In order let people
see it from any angle, I made an image of the backside of lady Godiva. I was
really satisfied with that part while working on the project.
Swarovski's
Rice
Swarovski has
been famous for its glass figures and other jewelry products. Because its logo
has a fog-like effect at the posterior side of the swan, I used rice for an
attempt to mimic it. At the final, I also spread glitter on top of it so the
image looked more like a glass products. This was the most time-consuming works
and my most favorite installation among the others. But fortunately, the
feedback from my audience wasn't good as I expected. Perhaps the connection
between rice and glass figures was too hard to be figured out, since rice is
not exactly the staple food in the U.S.
During the final
critique, I was suggested to make a performance video which was like throwing
an Apple into a garbage can while playing with my iPad, in order to allow people
to receive the message more easily. But after thinking about it for a while, I still
considered the installation was a better way for my project. I wanted the message
just popped out in front of my audiences' eyes, no matter if they got it
immediately or not. I wanted them to figure out by themselves. On the other
hand, I made my project with less-abstract content so the audience could understand
what it's about by thinking slightly. I hope when people saw my installations
they could start to concern about the wasting problem of necessity products in
this country. But my final goal was to make people use necessity goods
more moderately.
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