Reading Response # 3
The System of Objects
By Jean Baudrillard
Response by Chelsea Skorka
I would first like to say: What nonsense. How did someone make an entire book dedicated to the system of objects? A better question would be WHY. I am intrigued by this introduction and would like to, in time, read this book even if it is to answer the questions I just asked.
While reading this introduction, a lot of things came to my mind, things that barely had to do with what she was talking about about but more or less, the reading was extremely dense, so I had to take each sentence in turn, and try to glean information from the words I did know to understand what the author was trying to say..
The book cover says “radical thinkers”, and this is exactly what they are. Radical to the point that I do not understand why the book was written. The only information I gleaned from the text was that objects and their function and their attributes and characteristics can be categorized. So I will respond to that...
As a species, it is natural for us to develop schemas, all species do. For example: A bear may have encountered one person in his lifetime that gave him food and then developed the schema that weird, two legged, hairless animals, wearing food colors, bring food. It is also fitting to add that without social context most objects in our possession at any given time would be considered simply by their physical characteristics.
I use this image of The Little Mermaid as an example of many things.
- Ariel has developed schemas of her own from prior experience with similar objects.
- A specific object taken out of social context may or may not allude to its actual function.
- In observing an object without context we observe only the physical characteristics of an object, from this observation we can only speculate as to its function. Then we can get a glimpse of that society.
- Not knowing what an object does can lead to imagination, innovation, and speculation.
WHY do I bring this up? These ideas can be transcended into thoughts towards making one’s own artwork:
- With the knowledge that each viewer or handler of your work brings with them prior schemas about the world, those schemas WILL BE projected onto your work. Thus, it is recommended to research/ know such schemas for better understanding of how an audience is going to react to your work.
For Example: A tea cup. When presented with this object we consider certain things; can it hold tea? can I hold the cup? is it comfortable? uncomfortable? is this because of the handle? or the weight? or the heat? what does it look like? what does it remind me of? does the tea taste good coming out of the cup?
What is the artist trying to say through combination of all of these things?
Hommage a Meret Oppenheim, Betty Hirst. Photograph: Eat Me Daily
- What happens when you, as the artist, takes your made object and change the context? Etsy seller StayGoldMaryRose takes away the concept of tea in these tea cups and adds new context so that now, these objects are worn and have no utilitarian value anymore.
- Through creating art we, as artists, are reflecting upon and reacting to our personal experiences. Even if we are experiencing someone else reflect on their experience. So as we create art we give a glimpse of social context, even if the art makes fun of something in society. When an artist makes a tea cup that is made of meat, we understand something about society. For different types of people, this has different meaning, because people bring different schemas to your work. Personally, as a person who does not eat meat and loves tea, I am repulsed by the concept of a meat tea cup. However looking at this form as an archeologist, I could conclude that there must have been some controversy about the topic of consuming meat. In the context of a teacup, I can speculate that the artist might have been making a statement about eating meat as often as we drink tea.
- As artists, we have the opportunity to really use schemas to our advantage, either to sell our work or make a statement or both. We can do this in many ways through pushing context, function, experience, and knowledge of a form.
Above is a drawing of a cabinet of curiosities. People would travel to foreign parts of the world and collect objects to bring back and place in their cabinet of curiosities. Usually after taking the object out of context the traveler would embellish upon the physical characteristics of the object (sometimes physically) and then by telling a fictional tale about what the object was, what it belonged to, and what that thing did with the object. Some of the objects collected were displayed as Unicorn horns and dragon scales. Much to the interest of the viewer of another’s cabinet of curiosities their imagination of the rest of the world was able to run rampant. Thus creating the same: innovation, imagination and speculation as Ariel encountered.
However, throughout the centuries we as humans have begun to lose some of the old ways with the advance in technology. At one time, a caveman used his club, innovatively, to bludgeon, to bash, to poke, to smash, to show aggression, to hunt, to tenderize, to protect, to fight etc. Now we have multiple objects for each of those purposes.
While investigating an average kitchen these days one might find: a chopper, a lettuce spinner, a rice cooker, a vegetable steamer, a juicer, a popcorn maker, a toaster, a blender, a slow cooker etc. At one time, humans had fire, and a sharp rock. What I am getting at here is with all of these objects our lives have become more and more complicated even though these objects are supposed to make our lives easier, similarly to technology. And for what? We save five minute now putting the vegetable in the chopper but waste ten minutes later trying to clean the damn thing.
Below is a video giving us a perspective towards objects or stuff.
The Story of Stuff.
We have developed so many schemas and categories for everything that we tend to waste our time defining things and categorizing them. And for what purpose? The reading touched on an idea of making one part of a car that does multiple things. This is similar to the human body most parts of the body do multiple things, like a mouth chews food but also speaks, and a stomach breaks down food but also digests, blood carries oxygen to cells but it also carries carbon dioxide and antibodies that have different functions. The point I am trying to make though is that everything in the body works together to sustain life, thus everything in the body is connected. Much like everything in the universe is connected. So, we could choose to waste our lives trying to organize everything neatly into categories but everything IS connected so this is a feat of which one should not attempt. “The greatest illusion of this world, is the illusion of separation. things you think are separate and different are actually one in the same.”- Guru from Avatar cartoon. 
Kohei
A part of the same whole.
You bring some very good points, Chelsea. We do tend to group and categorize but also put associations with each group. I think that is why so many artists works that break those boundaries tend to be what we call "uncomfortable" or questioning. Those works seem to be the strongest. The fur tea set that you mention by Betty Hirst I think is that perfect example. What was functional and inviting is now repulsive because two categories mixed. It makes me wonder why we as humans fine comfort in those boundaries and what spurs it on. It also reminds me so much of what Paul Greenhalgh says about how historians need a way to categorize but how we as artist are going to define ourselves is the bigger responsibility. Will we falls to these groupings?
ReplyDeleteHaving taken a class based on the video (and book) of The Story of Stuff, I'm really interested in your take on our attitude towards things. In recent decades, our culture has certainly developed a system of making and using objects as disposable, impermanent, and isolated objects. Specialized tools are made to serve only one function, and are often made so poorly that they hardly last. Instead of buying one good knife that we can sharpen again, we buy knives, pineapple cutters, garlic crushers, apple corers, mandolin slicers, shredders and food processors which all serve the same essential purpose. The crappy metal rusts or wears so quickly that in a year or so you have to buy a new one altogether! This system of planned obsolescence is pretty crucial for our current economy, but destructive for our environment, work ethic, and attitudes towards objects (and, in turn, our experiences with them). As humans, though, I believe that we still want to interact with objects of quality, and this is why artists/craftspeople/artisans are still around.
ReplyDeleteI loved your response Chelsea! Just like Baudrillard's introduction, I had to read it a couple times and reread specific parts in order to grasp new levels of understanding. The part where you break down the symbol of a teacup from different people's perspectives is so interesting. It highlights our differences as humans with very different backgrounds and vantage points based on what we do in our lives. That one object can hold such a variety of meanings to different people makes me think of it as a metaphor for life; each person has a way of viewing world (events, other people, relationships, philosophy) unique to them. It would be cool to read an article about the categorization of non-concrete things.....of course it would be about why we can't categorize them. I love how you close with the idea that we are all connected, and everything is connected, so classifying and separating is a waste of time. I think that's the underlying idea that Baudrillard was getting at....he just used a lot of elaborate words to do it.
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