Commodity Fetish

The Future of the Festival?

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Something feels extremely afoul with Further Future (FF002), a self-proclaimed Music and Lifestyle Festival taking place about 40 miles from the Las Vegas strip the last weekend of April.

Perhaps anticipating the potential confusion a phrase like ‘lifestyle festival’ might create in a potential goer, FF002’s website offers clarification.

“Close your eyes. Imagine yourself surrounded by the people who inspire you the most: great friends, artists both new and established, musicians and performers, futurists and technologists; esteemed entrepreneurs, visionaries and thought leaders, all of you awash with new ideas and insights. You are dancing together deep in a remote desert; you are on the sands of a distant and untouched beach; you are on a mountain top looking across endless snow-capped peaks…We aspire to help seed the discovery of new knowledge and technologies to protect and heal our planet, our societies and one another, and to help us reach the next stage in our collective evolution. To constantly strive to improve; to become leaders in sustainability and resource efficiency, and in all that we do. We aspire to inspire…You… are the hero.”

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If the description continues to puzzle, there are plenty of images to help better visualize what it means to be surrounded by the people who inspire you the most and, as it turns out, they are all white people! Not only that, they are slim, trendy, smiling, cheering, hugging, and doing yoga on several occasions. At Further Future, the future is so bright, (not a pasty-pink white bright but rather a nicely tanned, glowing bright) I definitely gotta wear shades. And they should cost at least $400 dollars.

Assuming you are white, or at least multi-culti, own a few pairs of Oliver Peoples, have the means to spend $350 on the event ticket, $150 a night on a gastro experience of your choice, $7,500 to sleep in a ‘Lunar Palace’ (or at least $750 for an Alpha), a plane ticket to Vegas etc. is not assurance that the mass of uninhibited, gyrating entrepreneurs, visionaries, and thought leaders will embrace you into this tribe of collective, feel good, evolution. Maybe that’s why the organizers have created a Pinterest page with suggested FF002 attire (“We’ve put together a Pinterest board for our inspiration on what we think a Further Futurist might wear“). Because if we are to go off the website’s aesthetic, the only way to aspire to inspire, is to know how to be sexy in the desert. In fact, that the Pinterest page is framed as a question (“Are you a Further Futurest?”) suggests that any truly conscientious festival goer will undergo a rigorous, in-depth, self-evaluation to determine whether or not he or she is aesthetically fit to attend.

But why does this matter? From Coachella to SXSW, festivals seem increasingly preoccupied on festival fashion (e.g. who’s wearing what?), sponsors, and venders (is it a Vitamin Water or Budweiser kind of affair?), often to the detriment of the music itself. In an age where otherwise uneasy bedfellows such as Snoop Dogg and Rand Paul are notable speakers alongside a robust line up of CEO bros, where the festival’s founding vision is regurgitated on social media in a guru-like fashion, the contemporary festival increasingly resembles a highly programmed, carefully packaged experience to be consumed by festival and non-festival goes alike.

But FF02 has the potential to take the insidiousness of American festival culture one step further in two ways. First, although the Festival is billed as an experience of “collective evolution” nothing about its orchestration suggests collective collaboration. Anyone passionate about techno, EDM and the like will find the musical line up drool worthy. Yet their individual and collective creativity appears forfeited to the Festival entity itself. This isn’t a question of selling out but rather a questioning of a format in which musicians are hired in the classic capitalist/ worker sense to perform (as cogs) in the production of a visionary ‘lifestyle’ that is mostly the product of Rob Scott, a member of the Robot Heart Burning Man camp, lawyer, and venture capitalist aficionado.

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Second is the conflation of lifestyle and ideology. Of course lifestyle has been a part of American popular culture for decades (first coined in 1976) and as its roots are firmly grounded in marketing, American consumerism, and ultimately economics, one might say that lifestyle has always been an ideology. Certainly there is evidence of this when the festival founder proudly states “We aspire to be a lifestyle brand, a way to exist not just via music experiences or speakers.” But this is a serious problem when such a Festival proposes to heal not only our society, but the entire planet while charging people up to $7,500 for two days of accommodation in the desert, accommodations that include air conditioning, “clothing rack and full-length mirror are also provided, to ensure you look your best,” and 24-hour concierge service. This lifestyle ideology is far closer to anarcho capitalism than sustainability.

Furthermore, this carefully crafted lifestyle ideology has the power to resonate. I imagine this crowd awashing themselves in FF mantras such as the “The world of limitations is far away, judgments irrelevant and anything is possible” as they eat a curated oyster meal and decide they are doing the right thing by not judging the slightly overweight girl for not signing up for Kayla Itsine’s Bikini Body Guide prior to the event. That by doing an Ashtanga class in the morning and MDMA at night, by listening to lectures on technology, eating organic, and abandoning the Burning Man propensity for headdresses and nudity in respect for the Paiute Indians (whose reservation the festival is taking place on) they are somehow “heal[ing] our planet, our societies and one another.”

Fun, friendship, networking, relaxation will happen and maybe FF002 is correct, maybe this is the future format for developing leaders in sustainability and resource efficiency. But if it is, you should assume the future is Trump, maybe Clinton, but definitely not Sanders.

As the summer festival season approaches I’m left wondering what the further future of American festival culture might be. (Though many of us of original DEMFers have been wondering that for over a decade now.) It is probably safe to conclude that the general progression seems toward extreme exclusivity, seen most obviously in the ever-rising cost of tickets and wars over festival acquisition. But no matter how future forward these festivals seem to be, many continue to thrive off a Woodstock imaginary, be it through neo-hippy, urban boho fashion, the elimination of cash transactions (replaced of course by RFID wristbands) or feel good slogans of inclusivity and inspiration. Although a good number of free and open to the public festivals still exist, they are increasingly replaced by festivals that focus on a pre-meditated experience as opposed to an opportunity to experience. If FF002 is any indication, it seems the further future will continue to be pretty damn neoliberal after all.

 

The Gloved Era of Urban Chaos

Paris may have been the capital of 19th century modernity, but it was Berlin that gave birth to the gloved era of urban chaos. Unlike Paris, London, or even New York, Berlin at the turn of the 20th century was not just about the radical transformation of the city, but the birth of the city itself. The streetscape was a popular theme in German literature, visual art (e.g. Berlin Alexanderplatz or Kirchner’s Nollendorfplatz), and silent cinema. New techniques of speed and montage eliminated the passivity of the spectator by placing him or her directly into the frenzy of the crowded street. No matter that there was no sound, the metropolis was in motion. The stimulation was at times overwhelming, as were the passions of being confronted, even bombarded with the seductions of urban capitalism.

Chaos, desire, and disorder are urban phenomenon, and are responded to with order, control, and rationality. Desire arose from the visual stimulation, the temptation of material things in shop windows, new opportunities for physical proximity to members of the opposite sex. Disorder therefore arose not only the actually existing urban condition, the traffic, the construction, but also from the passions and desires–the possibilities–produced within the mind.

All this comes together in  Asphalt, the 1929 German film about a police officer whose life spirals into chaos after becoming entangled with a female thief. Gustav Fröhlic spends his days in the middle of a busy Berlin intersection directing everything from people, to cars, to horses and carriages. We see that he is equally precise and obedient in his home life: he comes home, removes his white gloves, eats his meal with his family, goes to bed and repeats the routine with the efficiency of machine technology.

Gustav’s spotless glove of order becomes unclean when he catches a beautiful young, impeccably dressed woman (Betty Amann) stealing a diamond from a jewelery shop. Realizing the implications of her actions, Amann breaks down and tries to appeal to the emotions and sympathies of the men around her.

“I’m behind on my rent,” she weeps (technically this is silent), “I should be thrown out tomorrow into the streets.”

So overcome by her beauty and plight, the owner of the jewelery store forgives her. Betty smiles to herself, thinking she is free to go. Gustav however insists on upholding the law, grabs her arm, and escorts her out.

In the police car, Betty once again tries to win Gustav over. She weeps onto his shoulders to let her go: “I have such fear of the streets!”

The camera focuses on Gustav, whose eyes reveal an expression somewhere between intrigue, pity, and, ultimately, indifference.

Gustav’s ability to control the chaos of the street is due to the fact that he simply has never actually succumb to it. His white gloves protect him from chaos and disorder of everyday experience, they grant him the power of objective rationality. The metaphor is extended further–into his passions. Betty asks to go to her apartment so that she may get her papers to bring to the police station. He considers her request and eventually agrees.

As they walk up to her apartment she continues to weep and plea to let her go. He refuses, walks to the window and waits for her to collect her things. As soon he looks away from her however, she locks the door to her bedroom and runs into his arms. Her attempts to seduce Gustav are so strongly rejected it is almost comical to watch. So strong is his sense of control, his refusal to go against what is right, that Betty must, almost literally, rape Gustav. There are no subtleties in this film; its explicit seduction and blatant sexuality must be interpreted as an extension of the city itself.

The urban chaos of the early 20th century was in large part due to the increased presence of unaccompanied women on the street. Woman was the sex that was undisciplined. It was thought that, because she was not in control of herself and her passions, she was a danger to both herself and the city itself. When Betty claims to fear the streets, we may interpret that in a number of ways. If she afraid of her passion, her inability to resist the temptations of luxury goods? Although her life is out of control, (gambling, shopping, a luxury apartment she can no longer pay for), by appearing out of control she is, in fact, in control. She was in control of the situation with the owner of the jewelery store, and now, after the seduction, she is in control of the situation with Gustav. He eventually loses himself to the pleasure of physicality. Afterward, he is calm, human, humbled, and embarrassed by his actions. He rips up the ticket, leaves the apartment, and returns home to his parents, where his dinner waits on the kitchen table. He tries but cannot eat, there is too much chaos within his mind. She on the other hand is unfazed by what has just happened. She eats her meal in bed and drifts off to sleep.

As the film progresses, both characters lose control and fall for each other so that the story becomes a somewhat classic love story, with Weimar Berlin as the backdrop, that third character that brings the two central characters together. Whether or not you’re a fan of the conclusion, director Joe May’s ability to capture the chaos of the Berlin streetscape is undeniably brilliant.

Performing the Rehearsal: The Strip Tease of Modernity

Hegel changed the course of modern philosophy when he asserted that history, driven by changes in the ideals and values of a given people, is  contradictory by nature. Yet modernity for Hegel was characterized by a sense of universality, thus lending itself to a certain idealism which was soon shattered by Marx, who used Hegelian dialectics to illustrate why modernity’s self image of a universally free and just society was, in fact, history’s most dangerous contradiction.

 The contradiction of modernity is a reoccurring theme in the work of Francis Alÿs, who currently has a retrospective at MoMA. While watching his 2006 video, The Politics of Rehearsal, I was reminded why the image of the prostitute is such a fitting representation of modernity. Just as the strip tease is always a rehearsal (for the sexual act is never performed), modernity never actually performed the very image it had rehearsed, the image of a universally free and just society.

The film begins at The Slipper Room in the Lower East Side. Shot in black and white, it opens with a woman practicing operatic scales behind a grand piano before cutting to footage from Washington D.C., January 20th, 1949. The television presenter announces that “The life of a democracy is about to be renewed.”

In his inaugural address, Truman announces to the American republic: “We must embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas…Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action against their human oppressors.”

We transition from Truman to the title of the piece and are told that the Politics of Rehearsal should be considered a metaphor of Latin America’s ambiguous affair with Modernity. Forever arousing, and yet, always delaying the moment it will happen.

We return to the Slipper Room, the piano player, the soprano, and soon, a woman in a sequin dress. First we see her foot, enveloped in rocket tall heels. It emerges from the wings, and a leg follows. Without words, just a sway of her hips, she announces her presence. We are captivated. A man’s voice tells us in Spanish:

“I was rethinking the implication of the rehearsal as a comment on modernity. And what becomes immediately obvious is the notion that modernity is pornographic.”

Baudelaire, that great poet of modernity was well-known for his reoccurring image of the prostitute as the juxtaposition between Paris past and present. But it’s Benjamin who uses the work of Baudelaire to make the explicit connection between prostitution, the commodity, and commodity production. In Convolute O of The Arcades Project, Benjamin discusses the prostitute and the gambler in relation to the suspension of time. While the gambler lives in a fantasy of suspended time, the job of the stripper, as entertainer and performer, is to suspend time.

The stripper must arouse and then prolong that arousal. This is what the spectator wants, for arousal to be maintained throughout the duration of the performance. But, because arousal is suspended, the spectator forgets that the sexual act will never actually be performed. The performance is, therefore, nothing more than a rehearsal of the act.

Modernity is incredibly appealing; it is seductive (even Hegel was enraptured) but, as the narrator warns us in the film, “even as it displays itself, it’s impossible to appropriate it.”

Truman’s speech is a rehearsal for modernity. The words behind his monotone voice arouse and seduce the listener. Like the order in which the stripper removes her clothes, the argument for democracy unfolds sequentially, (“First, we will continue to give unfaltering support to the United Nations…Second, we will continue our programs for world economic recovery…Third, we will strengthen freedom-loving nations against the dangers of aggression…”)

But,  in the decades that followed, the act of democracy was never actually performed; only rehearsed. Like the stripper, the role of the politician and his or her political ideology is to keep us in a constant state of arousal. The final act, the “What we have achieved in liberty, we will surpass in greater liberty,” will never be delivered. To satiate that arousal would put the stripper out of her job, the President out of power.

This means that stripper and the audience are not on the same time. She keeps it moving (she’s clocked in after all) while ensuring it never goes anywhere (stay aroused by my liberty and you will come to surpass it).

The stripper in the video removes one pair of underwear, only to present us with another smaller, sexier pair. Our eyes work hard to imagine what is behind that underwear, but, no matter how hard we try, only she, the performer, can remove them. And, when she finally does, time is up.

The strip tease of democratic fair dealing is a very nice display, but touching is forbidden. The spectator, believing it  possible to eventually overcome this small detail, repeats and repeats until there is no money left to pay for the show. We realize arousal costs a fortune and modernity never comes.

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

The title of this post is borrowed from Zizek’s 2010 book, a title that accurately describes the irony of a recent ad in the New York Times. Under the guise of tragedy, Eton Corporation’s “Help Japan by donating an Emergency Radio” illustrates the farce of contemporary consumption and its cultivation of an ‘authentic’ self by promoting consumerism that benefits not just the individual but society at large.

This Palo Alto-based company’s ad is simple, aesthetically pleasing, and tangible (I buy this physical object that is then donated to someone who is in immediate need of it), a relief to the thousands of people who want to help but are overwhelmed by the complexity of international aid relief and skeptical of its impact. One major complaint throughout the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami/earthquake was not that there wasn’t enough aid, but that it wasn’t reaching those who needed it. Eton appeals to the educated consumer who looks at an image of the emergency radio and easily envisions its arrival to a relief center somewhere in Northeast Japan.

As often happens in print journalism, the advertisement conflicts with the message of the article in close proximity to it. “Finding Reassurance in Order” is about the ability for daily life (hair cuts, onsens, bicycle repairing, dental visits) to continue thanks to “a passion for order and civility so deep-rooted that the chaos and despair of 1,000 strangers is subdued to the level of disarray expected at the monthly meeting of a book-lovers’ club,”(A11, 3/26/11). I read this and was reminded of the extreme, meticulous disaster preparedness I came across while living in Japan. The first thing my landlord showed me when I moved into my house was the location of an emergency hard hat, flashlight, water, and, yes, emergency radio.

So it is with some irony that I turn the page and see Eton’s ad. Sure, part of the proceeds go to the American Red Cross, but just how badly do the Japanese need American (or perhaps Chinese?) made short-wave radios? Of course, anyone who chooses to call 1-800-872-2228 is well-intended, and most likely, so is Eton.

A large component to any tragedy is the uncertainty of how to respond. There is the immediate tragedy and then there is the aftermath and the inability to measure if outside efforts are improving or worsening the situation. But, to often, tragedy becomes opportunity. The tragedy-as-farce of Eton’s radio is that in our recognition of tragedy, we unconsciously respond through what we know best–consumption. And, in this way, tragedy becomes opportunity for capitalist investment.

The tragedy-to-farce transition Zizek’s title is referring to is the 9/11-to-financial crises, but the essence of the discussion is ideology and how, in its pervasiveness, it appears to us as non-ideology.

Like Ethos Water:

“Here is an exemplary case of ‘cultural capitalism’: the Starbucks ad campaign ‘It’s not just what you’re buying. It’s what you’re buying into.’ The ‘cultural’ surplus is here spelled out: the price is higher than elsewhere since what you are really buying into is the ‘coffee ethic’ which includes care for the environment, social responsibility towards the producers, plus a place where you yourself can participate in communal life,”(53-4).

The argument is that Ethos water represents quality consumption, thus avoiding the infamous alienation Marx ascribed to the commodity. Ethos water, Toms shoes, and short-wave radios are all examples where “we are not merely buying and consuming, we are simultaneously doing something meaningful, showing our capacity for care and our global awareness, participating in a collective project,”(54). Unfortunately (depending on your angle of course), that collective project is all to often the human capacity to consume.

 

In the Domain of Body Culture

The image of the crowd belongs to the domain of body culture. It’s unquestionable powerful lies in momentum, where the body—as mass—replaces the singular mind. Last month, as crowds proliferated across the Middle East, there was a brief interlude here in the US in form of the Super bowl and its halftime show. The extreme juxtaposition between the two events left me contemplating the meaning of crowds, democracy, and whether or not the domain of body culture here in the US will ever move beyond the singular mind of capitalism.

“The Mass Ornament” is Kracauer’s famous essay on the crowd as an emotionless replication of the capitalist system of reproduction. Kracauer’s vessel for discussion is the Tiller Girls, a troop of women most akin to the Rockettes, known for their ability to use body parts to achieve interesting visual ornamentation. Calling them “products of American distraction factories,” Kracauer states: “The mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex of the rationality to which the prevailing economic system aspires,”(79).

This seems an apt description of the spectacle, from the Black Eyed Peas conscious aesthetic of multi-cultural bling, the meddly of American classics that relied on visual prompts encouraging the crowd to Pump It Up! and the cheap imitation of Daft Punk androgyny in the form of LED-clad background dancers. With the exception of Usher (who is dismissed from this discussion) the whole thing fit Kracauer’s Mass Ornament: it was a crowd, it had momentum and it even had power but, it was ambivalent and thus an end in and of itself.

“The commodities that it spews forth are not actually produced to be possessed; rather, they are made for the sake of a profit that knows no limit…value is not produced for the sake of value,”(78).

If this wasn’t clear from the beginning, then consider the media’s post-performance debate on the monetary figure Slash got to emerge from the ground.

Kracauer is often criticized for his failure to fact check the origins of the Tiller Girls, they were British, thus making his connection between Fordism and the mechanical formations of female legs less relevant. But maybe that connection was never meant to be. Perhaps the art of scientific management died with Detroit. For all the commonalities between the half-time show and the Tiller Girls, precision is not one of them.

I was reminded of this while watching the LED dancers. One arm was up, and one row over it was to the side. There was movement, energy was expended, but the robot dance was not mechanical enough and the pump it up failed to pump. The performance reflects the prevailing American mentality that impressions are best made through size and scale. With so much to look at, no one would notice all the mistakes–like the failure for the V in LOVE to light up.

To me, that seems an accurate description of our prevailing economic system.

The show concluded with confetti of the red, white, and blue variety, suggesting the event could be connected to a broader sense of nationalism.

“Fairy tales can become reality only on the ruins of natural unities,”(81) Kracauer concludes. American democracy might have once been a reality but it seems it have joined Sleeping Beauty in her 100 year slumber. Vapid spectacle is how the American crowd achieves its happily ever after, it’s time we look elsewhere for the power of the crowd and new fairy tales of democracy.

Some Shitty Wine at the Thing

A friend and I use to joke that Thursday nights in New York might as well be dubbed some shitty wine at the thing because of the numerous opportunities to partake in free alcohol and visual culture. Also known as exhibition openings, these alternative happy hours draw a wide range of people: underemployed students and trust-fund babies, the genuinely disheveled, the stylized disheveled, creative entrepreneurs, and the corporate type with their creative accessory girlfriend, boyfriend, partner…all of whom come together via two great social equalizers: provoking art and shitty booze.

One seldom learns anything about the exhibition on the opening night, but last Thursday I walked out of the gallery with new-found insight regarding the philosophical similarities between architecture and make up.

It began like this: a friend and I were standing at a little cafe table next to the bar when a man in black skinny jeans, black button down, and black glasses asked if he could join our table. Of course. He put down his almost empty glass of wine, plastic plate, and sighed.

“Now how the hell do I eat this thing?”

He was referring to his mini dosa and samosa, two food items that complimented the aesthetic behind the new exhibition featuring innovative design solutions in India.

“Best with your hands,” I replied.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Like finger food for real, love it.”

As mentioned, openings draw all kinds of people. The advantage to arriving early is that it’s not crowded so there’s room to appreciate the curated space. However, people are less incline to drink and more prone to talking. The pre-booze rhetoric, which includes causal nods to movements, ideas, and people can be tiresome. The advantage of arriving later is that by 8pm all pretentious conversation has disappeared.

It was 8:15.

“No but what is this for real,” he asked, grabbing a plastic fork and knife from the table next to the bar. “I mean is there meat in it?”

“No meat,” my friend explained, “it’s all vegetarian.”

“Vegan,” I added.

“Oh,” he seemed disappointed. “You know, I don’t get those vegans. When I have a party–and I love to have them–they get soooooo fucked up. Drink like fish but refuse to eat anything I cook…such lushes! My speciality is meat. They usually don’t come back”

“What kind?”

“What kind?!” He put down his plastic fork and knife with deliberate manner. “Any kind. Shit, you get me a dog and I’ll make it delicious. You know Beef Bourguignon?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll make you a dog bourguignon that is to die for!”

“Morgan doesn’t eat meat.”

“You mean she eats this stuff?” He turned to me, “You eat this stuff?”

“Yes,” my friend said. “She was in India last year and this was all she ate.”

“Get out of here!”

“Yup.”

“Just like this?”

“Just like that. Only, well, a dosa is usually huge.”

“Get out of here!…Are they this…greasy?” he asked, pressing his knife against the dosa skin so that the oil seeped out. “I mean, I tend to avoid Indian food, it all seems to be fried, which is strange.  I thought they only like eat traditional food. I mean, isn’t it expensive to fry food?…How old is frying anyway?”

None of us knew the answer to the question.

“So did you love India so much? Was it fabulous?”

I didn’t know how to respond. “Well,” I said and then paused, “I was there looking at a lot of the issues that are discussed in this exhibition…I don’t know, it was pretty mind-blowing.”

“I can imagine. I love this exhibition! It’s like, well, you know really colorful and well executed, an interesting presentation of materials, but I just love that like thread of ghettoness to it, you know, like making us go outside and getting food from a truck…and only serving Indian wine,” he paused and looked at our Kingfishers, “and beer! Serving Indian beer too!”

I remembered my brief encounter with a 40 oz Madras Special last spring and shuddered.

“So do you miss it? Was it fabulous?” he repeated.

“Uhmmmm…”

“I think that’s a hard question to answer,” my friend chimed in. “I mean look at this exhibition, there are some creative projects that are pretty inspiring, but ultimately they’re projects that are addressing some pretty dire situations.”

He seemed disappointed. “So are you girls architects?”

“No.”

“No.”

“She writes about it.”

“She studies it.”

“What do you do?” we asked simultaneously.

“Oh, I’m a make up artist.”

Our eyes lit up. How exciting! A non-architect! Oblivious to our expressions of joy, he wiped his mouth, then folded his paper napkin with care and precision.

“Do you come to exhibitions often?” my friend asked

“Oh, well, Katherine invited me,” he said, positioning his fork and knife to three o’clock, “because I did her make up.”

He was referring to the assistant director.

“But I like it! I mean, I like architecture, you know, it can make us feel really good about ourselves. If you’re walking in a city of grey buildings and all of a sudden you see this building with a lot of color, you feel so much better! Architects make sure our cities aren’t just grey buildings. That’s the power of transformation.”

“So,” I began, “do you look at people and think about what they could do to improve themselves, like, are most people clueless as to how to present their best features?”

“Oh no! That’s terrible! No, they pass by, I don’t see people any different then you do, but now, if they come to me asking for suggestions, then that’s a different story….though, I’ll tell you something I’ve never understood…”

“What’s that?”

“People come to me and ask me to give them a natural look, it’s absurd! If you want to look natural, don’t wear make up! It’s about transformation! We have one body but many faces, my job is to help show off that other face, to bring it to the surface, so that…”

“We don’t live in a sea of grey faces?” I ventured.

“Exactly,” he said. “And faces are easier to alter than facades.”

“Oooohhhhhh,” my friend and I sighed, such inspirational wisdom.

“Do you have a favorite brand?” my friend asked.

“Well, I work at the Channel counter at Barney’s…”

“I buy Yves Saint Laurent mascara,” my friend said, lowering her voice to a whisper, “it’s the best.”

“You’ve got fabulous eyelashes,” I said, and she did. “I remember noticing them the first day you started working.” It was true.

“Thanks, you know, right now I’m actually wearing Clinqiue…”

“Well then they’re naturally long,” I concluded, “natural beauty.”

“Everyone knows Clinque’s mascara is nothing to rave about,” our friend added.

It didn’t take a make up artist to recognize the truth in that statement.

“Yes, the Laurent stuff lasts literally two weeks and costs a fortune, but those two weeks…” she trailed off in reverie.

“My grandma sometimes sends me Lancolme mascara in the mail,” I said, realizing that using the same tube for over three months was probably bad form. I was suddenly aware of my lack of professionalism when it came to make up. “She sent me some for valentine’s day.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“So what’s your favorite product?” my friend asked with the assertiveness of a professional journalist. She was there, after all, to conduct interviews.

“Yeah, what do you recommend?” I echoed, picking up on the opportunity. It felt like we had just won a style opportunity from a fashion magazine, where the day is divided into hair, face, body, style and then readers get an hour by hour play back…the exhbition might have been about energy, water, and sanitation but this was my night to finally learn how to wear blush.

“Girls, make up is make up, it’s about transformation! I go to the beauty stores and get one of those eyeshadow palettes with more colors than a box of Crayolas…you can’t get that range at any make up counter at Barney’s…I live in the Bronx, it’s great for the imagination.”

“Oh.” We were both visibly disappointed. Perhaps we were too much the natural beauty type, searching for that perfect renovation that would reveal an architectural masterpiece.

There was silence.

“Let me get you both something to drink,” he said in a way that made it sound as if he was about to buy a round of drinks. “Do you want the shiraz or the cab?” The presentation of options corrected the lull in the conversation.

“I’ll take a Kingfisher.”

“Me too.”

“Aren’t you two charming!”

We smiled.

He returned to the cafe table and we clinked glasses.

“What about architecture,” my friend asked, “Do you have a favorite style?”

“Hmm, well, the stuff I see here, you know, it’s very contemporary. I like Frank Lloyd Wright, I mean, it’s probably stereotypical to reference him, and I’ve never seen his stuff, but I like it…the way he uses these flat low lines, it’s pretty interesting, and then, you know, you almost bend over to walk into the space because it’s low and flat but then you get into the room and it’s like whoosh! Big, high ceilings, that’s pretty interesting, I mean, I’ve never seen it, but that’s how it seems in pictures.”

In the back of my mind I heard Paul Simon, “Soooo long…” I kept this to myself.

“But I don’t know if I like the flatness of it. I love high ceilings and French art deco,” he continued. “But not American art deco, it’s soooo… sooo big! At least the French could do it delicately.”

“What do you mean?” my friend asked, “Why is American art deco big?”

“Well, it’s just wide, I suppose it’s the whole SPACE thing, you know, a lot of space in America. Paris, it’s compact, such history! It’s delicate.”

“What about art nouveau?” I asked. “Maybe you like Paris art nouveau? You know, like Mucha…the ornateness of it?” I said, thinking suddenly of Shaker furniture.

“Yes, I like that too. I get modernism but if I could design my own house, upstate mind you, it would be high ceilings, very classical, you know?”

“As in vaulted ceilings?” I asked. “Like gothic?”

“Yes! Totally, beautiful, breathtaking, like a church.”

“One would probably have austere furnishing if one lived in a house with vaulted ceilings,” my friend challenged, “it would be dark.”

“Perhaps,” our friend mused, “but it wouldn’t be oppressive like the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff, those roofs are so flat…”

All of the nights we harmonized…till dawn…

“I mean, I’ve never been inside of one, but from the pictures, I feel like this,” he put his arm down, flat at his side and a gesture of walking very stiffly. “Who wants to live in that when you can have high ceilings,” on that last word he lifted his chin up and his posture improved.

“Well, we live in New York,” my friend said, bringing us down to the ground.

Photogenic Factory Reproduction

Let me state the obvious: modern technologies instigated new forms of consumption in the early 20th century. This is well documented in the visual arts–particularly in photography.

Right now New York is home to a number of good exhibitions showcasing photography as the medium that truly  represented the changing social and physical landscape of a historical era.  Stieglitz, Strand, Steichen, Shamberg, and Atget brought beauty to the industrial and the industrial to beauty itself.

Techniques such as photogravure and autocrome united art to technology and challenged pre-established ideologies of reproduction, aura, and art itself (Benjamin is the obvious here). Impressive images such as Stieglitz’s The Steerage practically extinguished any 19th century concern regarding the validity of the photographic image as art.

“You may call this a crowd of immigrants,” Stieglitz explained, “To me it is a study in mathematical lines, in balance, in a pattern of light and shade.”

The ability to capture the shadows and geometric planes of organic and inorganic forms not only narrated the psyche of the medium and the subject it was capturing, but of Western Society’s entire historical shift. Picasso drew attention to this when he put photography on par with painting, which pleased Stieglitz enormously.

While these photographs narrate the personal, the collective, the inanimate, and the psychological, there is one image that I found particularly striking:

This gelatin silver print is estimated to be from 1910 from an unknown artist. Although the image is fairly small (38.8 x 52.2 cm) it immediately reminded me of another photograph from a much later time period.

Andreas Gursky’s 99 cent, a chromogenic color print from 2001, illustrates photography’s technical progress as well as loyalty to early modernist themes of technology and consumption. Roughly 207 x 307 cm, 99 cent is of enormous proportions and perhaps implicitly references the linear growth of consumer appetites. While Gursky’s digitally manipulated work is an opportunity for critics to revisit that early argument of whether or not photography deserves to be placed on the pedestal of high art, the camera lens continues to provide us with an eye into historical patterns of repetition of lines, planes, light, and that persistant relationship between technology and consumption.

Totalitarian Zoning for Public Health

 

John Leighton's plan to make London into concentric rings. (Photo Credit: Martin Gittins)

The relationship between city zoning and public health has historical origins in the slums of 19th century industrial cities. Although planning’s preoccupation with physical health was dormant for much of the later part of the 20th century, recent  discussions surrounding food security, supermarket deserts, and access to better food has caused many planners to revisit zoning law as an appropriate response to an augmenting urban health crises.

The recent International Conference on Urban Health in New York City  highlighted this topic with papers that discussed new laws and policies that could potentially stop the spread of what seems to be an obesity epidemic.

“The potential for law to contribute to obesity prevention remains largely unrealised,” writes professor of law Roger S Magnusson. The author goes on to explain the visibly reality that in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods there is a high proportion of fast food restaurants and a low proportion of grocery stores.

I’m in full favor for increasing access to better food items, bringing supermarkets back into the inner city and encouraging healthy communities. But there is something eerie and almost totalitarian in the language used throughout these policy debates. The topic moves away from the reality of multidimensional poverty of low-income neighborhoods and to  obesity as a perceived air-born epidemic that has the potential of reaching middle and upper classes.

Zoning is the law of spatial organization, it allows those in power to organize physical space according to perceived needs and demands. So while Jenny Craig, Atkins, and South Beach were responses to the perceived need to slim down our population, it seems as though Americans demand a good healthy dose of law to combat their obesity.

Continue reading →

Flirting with Capitalism: Shopping at Trader Joes

I’m pretty sure I was just flirting at Trader Joe’s.

It happened in the dried fruit and nut section. I was on my tip toes trying to see if they’d stocked more medjool dates. They hadn’t. Never again would I assume that because I loved  something, Trader Joe’s would have it. My disappointment was immeasurable.

To compensate, I adapted a buying technique akin to the Michigan Militia shopping at Costco and placed five packages of uncrystallized ginger, the next best thing after medjool dates, into my shopping basket.

I nearly jumped when a voice out of nowhere said:

“Do you recommend the ginger? I’ve been eying it for a while.”

There he was. A guy with bigger hair than mine and a declared love for ginger.

I was dumbfounded. Had he really been eying the ginger, or just me clear the shelf of it?”If you’re into ginger,” I said, “then you’d like it. It doesn’t have all the sugar on it, so it’s less candied.”

“Yeah, I noticed that!” He said with excitement that blew me out of the water. “I mean, that it doesn’t have all the sugar. It’s like, the perfect snack” He paused and then, gazing into my eyes, he asked, “How else do you like your ginger? Do you ever cook with it?”

I was smitten.

As young, urban hipsters with big hair, our conversation subtly switched from ginger to socio-cultural things people do in the city. He liked stuff. And going out and doing stuff.  My evolving fantasy was difficult to maintain among the chaos of shoppers. We had to reposition ourselves and constantly apologize for being stationary in the sea of movement. It was absolutely impossible to gauge how much ginger I could eventually fit inside his mouth, if given the opportunity.

The diminishing romanticism culminated when out of the blue he announced with pride, “This is my first time ever at Trader Joe’s. I can’t believe what I’ve walked into. All my favorite items are here and they’re soo much cheaper!”

I took a step back and almost crashed into a pregnant woman reaching for walnuts.  His  innocent statement was akin to sleeping with a virgin. How should I react? Should I try to keep the myth of Trader Joe’s alive? Didn’t he know that we were participating in the post-advanced capitalist experience of consumer mythology? True, I was also shopping there, but I was already corrupt.

The moment faded. I concluded our conversation by mentioning that uncrystalized ginger was considered too ‘spicy’ by some, wished him well on his shopping journey, and made a move toward the coffee and vitamin aisle.

Here in New York, most people I know are over the allure of Trader Joe’s. Although we still succumb to the  slogan that “The line,” which usually snakes down the aisles and out to 14th street, “is worth the savings,” most of us do so begrudgingly.

It had been many months since I had shopped at Trader Joe’s. But, a few weeks ago, I received a $100 dollar gift card for Trader Joe’s, because I got a real job. Both the job and the gift card were pretty cool. $100 doesn’t go far in New York, but it does at Trader Joe’s. Before I knew it, I was back in line.

Waiting 30 minutes to buy twelve or less items of real inconsequential nutritional value may seem absurd in the moment. But the obnoxious cow bell that rings incessantly at the check out, the uncomfortably close contact with OPSB (Other People’s Shopping Baskets), and aggressive spatial behavior required to get your products all dissipates as soon as you get home and have a pound of Dark Sumatra, organic Greek-style yogurt, and matcha-covered almonds sitting comfortably on the shelf.

Everything about Trader Joe’s, from the free samples, ridiculous cheap prices, disturbingly friendly staff, and self-branded ‘neighborhood grocery store’ is in fact capitalism at it’s best. Calling TJ’s a grocery store is somewhat misleading. Like capitalism, it has a lot of choice but no real sustenance. Shopping there does not necessarily add up to a complete meal.

The capitalist beauty of Trader Joe’s is the wide range of products that help build up a culinary identity. Flax seed tortilla chips and guacamole for a casual rooftop party, prepackaged lox, plain cream cheese (note bagels and chives are nowhere to be found), and sparkling grapefruit Italian soda for a lovely Sunday Brunch.

The overall identity is akin to an old-time General Store. The brown paper grocery bag alludes to a pastoral pre-industrial nostalgia. We look at the boy and girl in their jumpers and pantaloons, remember all that French cheese we just bought and conclude, hey, I could go on a picnic too!

However, the reality of TJ’s is neither pastoral nor industrial–it is the beauty of post-Fordist retail systems, a time where people are less concerned with ‘keeping up with the Joneses” and more concerned with being different from the Joneses’. We engage in democracy through consumption, and the ability to choose what we consume.

With their high level computerized stock-taking systems, supermarkets represent one of the key institutions of post-Fordist democratic consumption. Murray describes it as an emphasis that shifts away from a manufacturers’ economy of scale to a retailers’ economy of scope (1989, 43). The result is, according to cultural studies professor Jim McGuigan, a discriminating consumer (1996, 89). We feel both entitled to and empowered by the choices we make.

The ability to bridge the gap between the fiction of Trader Joe’s as a neighborhood grocery store  and the reality of a massive global operation lies in the magic of the TJ’s associates. These men and women are trained to be incredibly friendly, helpful, and personable, just like your old fashion general store owner, you know, the man or woman who always pre-ordered you a shovel and knew the type of calico you preferred.

TJ’s is most akin to the general store in the way that stock selection is unpredictable and fluctuates according to market demand. Like all good 21st century shoppers, most TJ’s customers have specific items they come in for. It’s easy to become frustrated when half your food items are not available. A fellow classmate of mine has a noticable difficulty pulling marathon sessions in the computer lab when Trader Joe’s is out of their low-salt trail mix.

Legend has it that the Manhattan branch Trader Joe’s hires only actors and actresses. These associates, in their red tropical shirts, do a wonderful job pacifying irate customers. They’ve developed an uncanny ability to take one look at a shopper’s baskets,  summarize his or her personality, and direct the topic away from the missing food item. They talk about films, make some self-deprecating yet humanizing comment, suggest another food item, and then subtly direct the customer to the check out.

In short, they work magic.

Less than a block is Whole Foods, which has far more selection but equally long lines, pistachios that cost three times more, and unsympathetic associates.

A few years ago, Whole Foods earned the nickname “Whole Paycheck” for their posh identity.  Although the company has worked hard to change this, their self-branding is significantly different from TJ’s.

Trader Joe’s success lies in the company’s suspension of disbelief. Our shopping experience is somewhere between the elitism of Whole Foods and the proletariat savings of Walmart, Farmer Jack’s, Associates, C-Town, or Food Bazaar. Feeling empowered by choice allows us to flirt with capitalism and causes us to ignore the underlying hegemonic systems of reproduction.

Further Reading:

McGuigan, J. (1996). Culture and the Public Sphere. London: Routledge.

Murray, R. (1989) New Times-The Changing Face of Politics in the 1990s. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

The (Vulgar) Global Subject

“Imperialist expansion is not just differentiated but differentiating; the calculation of “difference” is part and parcel of the strategies of imperial expansion.”

In his chapter on “Toward a Vulgar Theory of Imperialism,” architectural historian Arindam Dutta examines the various spokes that comprised Britain’s wheel of imperialism. His argument: nothing is inconsequential. Even the simple act of taking tea potentially sequesters an attempt at anti-colonial insurgency (or instigates colonial insurgency for that matter). The lesson: there is nothing innocent about the everyday mundane.

Dutta’s quote, which falls on the last page of the chapter, is an interesting conclusion to a fascinating topic; the reader is left wondering whether imperialism may be substituted with globalization. More specifically, what is the relationship between 19th century imperialism, “difference,” and 21st century globalization? The “difference” Dutta alludes to, and I’m blatantly referring to is the difference of Derrida, as it applies to the time and space of what I will call the global everyday.

Both imperialism and globalization are acts of expansion, precariously balancing ideological differentiation, homogenization, and the politics of the mundane.

Imperial Britain in India expanded through a central government (to be discussed in later entries) that advocated policies of both integration and perpetual deferral. The result is, as Dutta states, “the native can ‘not yet’ represent itself as subject.”

In his recent essay, “Variations of Urban Environmental Transitions,” author Peter Marcotullio uses the idea of time-space telescoping to discuss urban environments. While ‘development’ in Europe and North America has followed a historically linear pattern, the same cannot be said of many post-colonial countries. Changes in speed and efficiency of human activity means technological development is occurring simultaneously with environmental (and thus social) degradation.

Might we use the idea of time-space telescoping to look at the post-colonial Indian citizen/subject and the crises of representation in relation to variations of urban globalization?

In the developed world, globalization expands through symbolic capital—the art of differentiating par excellence. We purchase products that help defer homogenization by defining our individuality. Yet,  within the ideology of ‘free choice,’ people largely define themselves not through what they are but through what they are not. Williamsburg, Brooklyn is one example of the endless chain of signifiers. The irony of 21st century globalization is that differentiation through the individualization of the everyday products we consume, in fact make us more homogenous.

But can the same be said about the cultural context within the post-colonial developing world? Imperialism works under the guise of homogenization but promotes differentiation. Globalization works under the guise of differentiation but promotes homogenization. Both have the ability to make a certain vulgarity out of our everyday practices. Did Barthes’s Death of the Author come too soon or too late for Dutta’s native?

Returning now to that mundane cup of tea I will soon fix for myself.  Having a cup of tea allows me to punctuate my act of moving through the temporal linearity of the day. However, my tea, imported from China, also speaks to the vulgarity of global time, global space, and the continual indeterminacy of the subject.

Dutta, Atrindam. 2007. The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of its Global Reproducibility. New York: Routledge.