Suspended Histories

Stubborn Life of Things Series

“What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest” - Andy Warhol

Mass production, accelerated advertising and built-in obsolescence have changed the way we assign and perceive value.  The principal objectives behind postmodern consumption practices lie not in the utilitarian attributes of a product, but rather in its symbolic value.  In adaption to the transience of the market, the importance of a product’s utility has slowly dissipated; instead it is the symbolic value of an object that determines its worth.  The birth of symbolic value came in tandem to the industrial revolution, where identical objects where mass produced for mass consumption. Brand fetishism and family heirlooms came as a reaction to the crisis of over accumulation. In market inundated in excess of the same, the worth is symbolically conferred through artificial singularity.

Sam Heydt 2014

Glossary

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