Evolution of Space Transport
57 Years of NASA/Dryden Research Aircraft
Base Objects
Creation Documents
Docking Maps 001 to 007
entryport001
Hyper Flourishes
Prime Hummers
Trucking Posters
Exhibited in full:
“The Evolution of Space Transport,” Ohio University MFA Thesis Exhibition, Seigfred Gallery, Ohio University, Athens, OH
Exhibited in part:
“Snap to Grid” exhibition, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA
Read a supplementary essay on this work here
This body of work is located by knitting together numerous discourses; the first (and most recognizable) is that of a fictional evolutionary system of futuristic space transport which finds physical form in the mimetic use of the disposable razor blade. This first layer engages with the act of artistic production and the creative representation of a phenomenon by which it (the act) is legitimated and consumed. This is also the point where “objects” and their “variations” are brought into the equation. This first discourse is at once playful, curious, and absurd – characteristics which will recur throughout the different levels of inquiry that this project seeks to incorporate.
Following this first discourse comes the next, wherein the artistic modes of production (namely, though not limited to, the theoretical infinitude of the digital print) mimics not only that of the antecedents (the “space semi” and disposable razor blade, in all of their subtle variety) but more appropriately the larger ideas of mass production of goods and the systems by which those goods are marketed and legitimated (herein following Baudrillard’s idea that “no object is proposed to the consumer as a single variety”, Girard’s “model of desire”, and Marx’s notion of “transubstantiation” – wherein the product is magically turned into money through purchase with the aid of aesthetics, seduction and ritual). I am proffering the disposable razorblade as the prototypical object of marketability under a capitalist arrangement.
A third discourse arises from the questions of the second, and pulls into the revolving mass the issues raised in the first. If disposable razor blades can be marketed in near infinitude (as, following the capitalist rhetoric, they must be), where does this posit other goods? Clothing, cars, or ballpoint pens? What about art? If each of these objects in successive generation (within their own microcosms) exhibit slight variation, and this variation is meant to increase potential desire and distribution, what does this do to our roles as producers and consumers? Where do we now posit ourselves in the system of production/consumption in a post-Fordist period of flexible accumulation? And where does the arrangement of art and art making find itself in relation to these changing schemata?
It seems that we are now engaged with the system of consumption more than production, and that our relationship to consumption has everything to do with the language of consumption, and how this language speaks to our personal degrees of affluence (in relation to everyone around us). It’s no longer about the object itself – it is what owning the object says about us (to everyone else) that is important to us. It is how we consume less than what we consume that shows others just how good/important/smart/savvy/etc we are.
And if we see that it is less how the object functions, less its monetary worth and more the way the object looks and the social connotations it has ascribed to it, then we can see how the visual consumption of art, or the degree of affluence as found in the comprehension of complex works does the same thing that buying this color Hummer over this color BMW does.
Is this where flexible accumulation really relates to this new language of the object? Baudrillard says that “the conspicuous consumption of the great capitalists, the ‘Citizen Kanes’, is over, and there are no great fortunes anymore…Things have moved on; the criteria of value are now elsewhere…Knowledge, culture, the structures of responsibility and decision making, and influence are all criteria which, though still largely associated with wealth and level of income, have to a great extent relegated these latter – together with external marks of status – in the order of the social determinants of value, in the hierarchy of criteria of ‘power’.” And here, in summation: “The rich man who drives a 2CV no longer bedazzles.
What he does is more subtle: he super-differentiates himself, super-distinguishes himself by his manner of consuming, by his style.”
Baudrillard goes on to talk about the things which will become important in this new economy of language – when everything else is equal, when everything else has been homogenized (through typical aspects of flexible accumulation, i.e. the credit system, mutual funds, global trading at a hyper-level, etc.), Baudrillard thinks that “knowledge and power” will become the new, true commodity.
Again, where does this place art? If all of this is accurate, then it seems that alongside Baudrillard’s lists of knowledge and power can be placed aesthetic savvy, or, an affirmation of your (new) affluence by way of viewing. Certainly this is nothing new, and I don’t pretend to think the idea of self- and social-importance as registered through looking at art to be anything noteworthy. However, in this current economic period, I would argue that this same practice has risen to a new level of importance – looking-at and trying-to understand art has become a commodified practice, just as wage-labor has been for 250 years.
