nothing personal: observations on consumer society

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Midpoint Proposal: 1st | Midpoint Proposal: 2nd
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Home

Theoretically, the idea of home is that it is a particular environment belonging to one person and differentiated from other people's taste. Therefore, 'Home' is an appropriate setting for the project as being a space to display a personal collection of objects. However, in postmodern society, since people lose their individuality and become a singular entity due to manipulations by a multicentered power, the home is also losing its quality of individuality. Differing from the power in modern societies, in the capitalist, postmodern, society the power has an undefined character without a subject that has the ability to metamorphose constantly and to spread in all directions. Society is being operated consciously, unconsciously and subconsciously by dictated prescribed life styles that produce a generic common taste.
In the project, the aim is to create a living space, which signifies the generic taste of consumer society. An installation that contains necessary furnishings to indicate a generic living space will be set up to replicate a living room or a studio apartment that is emblematic of the a 'Home Sweet Home' feeling, having a warm, inviting, comforting atmosphere through the use of lighting, sound, color, and textiles. The sensation of familiarity to one's home will be caught by collective unconscious. Defining the common taste that has been created by singular and multiple power sources with methods such as cultural dictations, unifications, normalizations, and replications, is the key point to deconstruct the consumption imagery of this society.

A dark side of this act appears through the choice of material. The project is a composition of products, considered as consumer units, in opposition to traditional artistic materials. The act of using consumed objects for the project is an attempt to undermine the sacred state of art, guarded by the modernist theory of Clement Greenberg, which denies art as a product of consumption.
The unit surfaces will be printed with various patterns created out of detail shots of consumerism imagery that can only be recognized by the trained eye of the consumer. Although harmony in decoration is desired instead of a chaotic mess of colors and images, the installation will have a subliminal psychedelic effect caused by repetitions. This delicate accord will be achieved through a combination of colors, sizes and shapes of images and pattern designs. The desired effect on the viewer of this detailed study is the realization of the power of consumerism imagery. In other words, the installation will generate an awareness of the dictatorship of political, social, cultural power on society's aesthetic taste.

Influences

• A realization of social, cultural and ethical rules, legitimation, and normalizations of modern society that I left behind. Only by comparing the two cultures could I define the norms under which I was acclimated.
• A realization of a postmodern society during the attempt of analyzing the new society.
• An overwhelming display of consumption and the imagery which dictates it.
• A personal change from modern understandings [including all ethical, political, cultural and social aspects] by critical analyses of modernism, to a postmodern understanding.

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