Consumption as art
July 28, 2006 9:23 AM Subscribe
Obsessive Consumption wants to know what you buy. Obsessive Consumption wants to know what you owe. Created by Kate Bingaman to showcase her love/hate relationship with money, shopping, branding, credit cards, celebrity, advertising and marketing, she documented all of her purchases for 28 months starting on January 22nd, 2002 and ending on April 22nd, 2004. Currently she is drawing a lot of her purchases and all of her credit card statements until they are paid off. Her Obsessive Consumption installation in Kansas City is particularly impressive.
Her site doesn't sounds as if it would be fascinating, but it is. I love ehr idea of making art out of the mundane.
posted by Sassenach at 11:27 AM on July 28, 2006
posted by Sassenach at 11:27 AM on July 28, 2006
i hope that isn't her real credit card number on those drawings
posted by timory at 1:29 PM on July 28, 2006
posted by timory at 1:29 PM on July 28, 2006
I really like this.
Her work has an innocence about it that resonates with me in light of the subject matter. It's kind of ... Pollyana? Consume! Charge it! It's happy and fun and rewarding and without consequences!
Or maybe I'm feeling like that because I'm carrying a balance on my CCs at the moment, which I hate. As usual, art is at the intersection of the artist and the audience's experience.
posted by raedyn at 1:46 PM on July 28, 2006
Her work has an innocence about it that resonates with me in light of the subject matter. It's kind of ... Pollyana? Consume! Charge it! It's happy and fun and rewarding and without consequences!
Or maybe I'm feeling like that because I'm carrying a balance on my CCs at the moment, which I hate. As usual, art is at the intersection of the artist and the audience's experience.
posted by raedyn at 1:46 PM on July 28, 2006
Art. A friend has a tattoo of the words from an Anne Sexton poem, reading "o my hunger"--yes, I won't say where for his or her sake; I said "wouldn't it be ironic if you starved to death?" I felt bad saying it then, and I feel bad typing it now. It's like when I let the cat out and told it to get hit by a car. I knew it was rotten, and felt even worse when it got run over that same day.
All of this--art about consumerism, the friend's literary tattoo, overly-literal obedient house pets-- is interrelated and bleak. I'm not saying it's good or bad, merely it does not bode well on the shamanic side of my brain. I desire recognition for the effort of my frivolous fingers, as well. Eventually the postman's back will break from carrying all the handmade tchotchkes and statement pieces about being one-of-the-free-to-shop. Eventually I'll get tired of trying to form an opinion or argument about it. Sooner or later, the cat gets run over, and someone somewhere starves to death.
I think it's something we learned in the first dotcom era, but didn't really care to notice: somewhere someone is planting a victory garden, and it's not you. You are sewing ironic pillows for $4.95 shipping and handling, and I am wasting critical breath and ozone envying you for your audacity. Work me, Lord, make me special and artistic and incredibly opinionated, so that I, too, may get paid for it, while someone else justifies my carbon by having even less, while going into further debt for my sake.
Art is doing what it should, I guess.
posted by eegphalanges at 10:03 AM on July 29, 2006
All of this--art about consumerism, the friend's literary tattoo, overly-literal obedient house pets-- is interrelated and bleak. I'm not saying it's good or bad, merely it does not bode well on the shamanic side of my brain. I desire recognition for the effort of my frivolous fingers, as well. Eventually the postman's back will break from carrying all the handmade tchotchkes and statement pieces about being one-of-the-free-to-shop. Eventually I'll get tired of trying to form an opinion or argument about it. Sooner or later, the cat gets run over, and someone somewhere starves to death.
I think it's something we learned in the first dotcom era, but didn't really care to notice: somewhere someone is planting a victory garden, and it's not you. You are sewing ironic pillows for $4.95 shipping and handling, and I am wasting critical breath and ozone envying you for your audacity. Work me, Lord, make me special and artistic and incredibly opinionated, so that I, too, may get paid for it, while someone else justifies my carbon by having even less, while going into further debt for my sake.
Art is doing what it should, I guess.
posted by eegphalanges at 10:03 AM on July 29, 2006
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posted by scheptech at 9:35 AM on July 28, 2006