This review of an piece by Matthew Darbyshire at the Hayward Gallery exploring the ‘fug’ /’visual puke’ of consumerism.
In Adrian Searle’s review he talks about the optimism of consumerism that is forward looking and its actual emptiness.
As living standards rise across the world can we imagine billions more people all after this type of fulfilment? I don’t think its going to happen as the wheels came off some time ago. Hopefully as companies respond to peoples demand for enabling tools (to live well) we can move out of the old prosperity generating paradigm of stressed out consumerism into one of participatory creativity (something ive looked at a bit in this post).
The biggest challenge is with the world’s new consumers. How to pull them into a different way of doing things when the only reference point is the post war era where they looked on a a small minority raced to accumulate all the trappings associated with modern, happy, healthy, living.
Need a new shaping strategy
The coming demand spike has implications for everyone’s wellbeing. Turning round the accumulation supertanker of this size will take time (too long?). Perhaps an answer lies in this idea of the future? Redefining what people are striving for and creating a shaping strategy for the future of prosperity and wellbeing that looks far better than the alternative.
The inquest for meaning , exploring what the went wrong with the old model needs to carry on, meanwhile companies and governments ( i.e. politicians on election cycles) need to get wise to the limits of what came before. This is about transparency and equity – a problem in the emerging centres of demand. It is also about real innovation where products and services are created in a new deal with new customers that aims to help them prosper for the next 100 years.
As it stands, acknowledging that the old model has failed wont deliver anything but a shortlived boost seems to be the one thing companies and governments cant talk about even as the world disintegrates around them. Against this people are organising like never before, bypassing traditional structures and making things happen in a peer-to-peer world that isn’t about illusory, incremental gains favoured by the old guard. Read More…
