Colouring Book
Table of Contents 03
Affect, as fickle as Water
06
The Diagram and Haute Couture - Removing the Givens
08
The Autonomy of Affect – Fashion as a Modern Virus
10
The Active Engineering of the Affective Register and Rebranding
12
Shopping as a Social Discipline
14
Institution of Exhibition - The Display Window
16
Control Societies and the Uniform of Confinement
18
Consumerism and the Other Side of the Coin
20
Bibliography 23
Table of Contents
Introduction 05
The choice of the ‘institution of shopping’ is something which might seem very superficial at first glance, but a choice mad since I believe there are a so many more levels to this subject than visible at first thought, and how our society is infused at all levels of consumerism, which is one of the latest driving forces, although not always visible, more at an abstract level. Filtering the ‘institution of shopping’ through the theories by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Brian Massumi, Jan Verwoert, Nigel Thrift, Gregory Seijworth, Melissa Gregg and Tony Bennett and studying the subject in new angels generated a new understanding of the extent to which our society actually is permeated with consumerism and shopping and how it makes up such a large cornerstone of society. Another discovery was the secrecy and abstractedness of consumerism at works, like layers and layers of veils to ‘cover and protect’ us from the ugly truth and keep us shopping in the grips of consumerism.
What becomes of society when the main aim are a pair of new shoes and a day out for a family on a weekend consist of a whole day in the shopping mall, since the consumerist system tells us that all we ever need can be found in the mall. What signals does this send to our children, and furthermore, where does this bring the cultural identity of our society? There might be a danger that the cultural content of the society becomes hollow and superficial, the versatility and richness might change into something more monotonous and bleak, and additionally, the pitfalls which follow this, such as the evident dissatisfaction with what you have and the debt trap. In addition, these essays are trying to raise questions often made invisible. The methods of control imposed by the system of consumerism and capitalism, in the aura of the free mind, the history of the item, how did it get to the shelf in front of me, and who benefits from me purchasing this? What is at the other side of the coin?
Introduction - The Logic of Sensation (In the Institution)
Architecture and philosophy have strong links, and if applied correctly, the relationship can prove to be very fruitful. During the course of eight weeks we have been reading a number of texts, which in different ways deal with affect, sensation and the institution. The essays in this colouring book explore the readings through a selected key theme, in the form of an institution. The theme I chose was ’the institution of shopping’, which also expands to include consumerism and capitalism, since they are all closely linked and dependant on each other.
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
The fickle fluidity which persists in captivity, be it a cup or a pool, the labelling of its different states, which are forever changing, the common denominator being the changes within each state, a wave is always a wave, but not one will be similar to the one which came before, or after it.
‘Affect is found in those intensities that pass body to body…in those resonances that circulate about, between and sometimes stick to bodies and worlds.’
The moving of the ocean, almost like heartbeats, which one can feel on the body when immersed in it, it is something very palpable, yet abstract, it definitely has a presence, while an abstract such, which one cannot grasp with the bare hands. The surge of energies being interchanged between bodies, like affect - but on a conscious level.
a supple incrementalism of ever-modulating force-relations – that rises and falls not only along various rhythms and modalities of encounter but also through the troughs and sieves of sensation and sensibility…’
The various attempts to describe affect lead the mind to associations with water, the fragile fickleness it holds, with yet a mighty strength, resonating even the slightest stirring and conducting energies. The incredibly intensity and forceful power of the water, and yet at the same time the ease of it’s movements, the rhythms with which the currents move at several layers, from the slightest tickle to a flow with a fatal strength. The swift changes of the progression; every encounter alters the flow, redirects it, gives it strength or slows it down. The most insignificant influence from the surroundings will give an immediate response in the water, a slight tremor gives resonance which can travel for miles and create chaos at the encounter with the next body.
An ocean of affect - tumbling, stirring, tossing - touching, never at rest, always changing. Erratic, incalculable, fickle, in ebb and in flow, tickling, stroking, pushing, forcing, infolding all the energy it is being fed, shifting towards an unpredictable future, which might not be visible from the present, just like affect. - Sofie Andersson
1 - Gregory Seijworth and Melissa Gregg ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’ in Gregory Seijworth and Melissa Gregg eds. The Affect Theory Reader, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010, p.2. 2 – Ibid., p.4.
Affect, as fickle as Water
“Affect can be understood (then) as a gradient of bodily capacity –
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
painting, either by being wiped, brushed, or rubbed, or else covered over. For example, a mouth: it will be elongated, stretched from one side of the head to the other. For example, the head: part of it will be cleared away with a brush, broom, sponge or rag. This is what Bacon calls a ‘graph’ or a diagram…” (1) The application and act of removing the givens and the ‘graph’ or diagram can also be traced to other fields. In haute couture the removal, erasing, changing, bending and stretching of borders and outlines, both material and abstract, are the foundation of what defines the work. The rules and givens for what clothes should be, look like and perform are altered to create a world of sensation and fantasy. Once there to protect us from being naked in front of the world, to shelter us from weather and wind, to optimize our functionality in everyday life now transforms into a diagrammatic form of the clothing wear we all know. The fashion diagram generates clothing made up of complex geometric shapes, sometimes impossible to move unrestricted in. It uses materials which range from folded paper to meat to chicken wire or a thousand layers of tulle and textiles so fragile they might fall apart if you try to wash them.
Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the repulsion and seduction the author tries to instil in the audience over his work is another parallel existing between the worlds of the different diagrams. The never ending pursuit for attention and reactions in haute couture, often through provocation and repulsion, and yet, at the same time the seduction through the image of utopia. So, it seems, the essence of haute couture is the removing of the givens. “Bacon’s art is full of paradox - he both repulses and seduces his audience simultaneously. He repulses them with his shocking subject matter and his dispassionate gaze which has the detached curiosity of a scientist watching a lab rat. However, he also seduces them by the rich sensual qualities of his beautiful paint surface with its electrifying brushwork and bold expressive colour.” (2)
- Sofie Andersson
1 - Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Diagram’, in The Logic of Sensation, London: Continuum, 2003, p.100. 2 - http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/portraiture/bacon/francis_ bacon.htm
The Diagram and Haute Couture - Removing the Givens
“It is precisely theses givens that will be removed by the act of
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
capitalist, image- and information-based economics. Think of the image/expression-events in which we bathe. Think interruption. Think of the fast cuts of the video clip or the toocool TV commercial. Think of the cuts from TV programming to commercials. Think of the cuts across programming and commercials achievable through zapping. Think of the distractedness of television viewing, the constant cuts from the screen to its immediate surroundings, to the viewing context where other actions are performed in fits and starts as attention flits. Think of the joyously incongruent juxtapositions of surfing the Internet. Think of our bombardment by commercial images off the screen, at every step in our daily rounds. Think of the imagistic operation of the consumer object as turnover times decrease as fast as styles can be recycled. Everywhere the cut, the suspenseincipience. Virtuality, perhaps?” (1) In our daily lives there is a constant flow, bombardment of commercial ‘information’, it is off our computers, our smartphones, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards surrounding us, in speakers, on buses, in the underground simply everywhere we go. It’s the driving forces which generate the fast paced world of consumerism and shopping, cutting quickly in between commercial ‘information’ increasing the inability to concentrate and stay centred, with a single piece of information or a single object, for longer periods of time.
While showing you a universe of things you could have, how you could better yourself, or your home, places to go and objects to acquire, it intensifies the dissatisfaction with what you have and feeds the hunger for more, more, more. The forever fast-feeding of new commercial ‘information’ nourishes the desire for all things new, at the same time as it decreases the turnover time for introducing new consumer objects, all the while decreasing the life span of desire for already acquired ones. Effectively, affect produces an economic effect, with fashion trends spreading like a virus, soon to be everywhere, just for the viral fashion to change its dna the very next day, in order to start a new infection. “The ability of affect to produce an economic effect more swiftly and surely than economics itself means that affect is a real condition, an intrinsic variable of the late capitalistic system, as infrastructural as a factory. Actually, it is beyond infrastructural, it is everywhere, in effect. Its ability to come second hand, to switch domains and produce effects across them all, gives it a metafactorial ubiquity. It is beyond infrastructural. It is transversal.” (2) - Sofie Andersson 1 - Brian Massumi, The Autonomy of Affect, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002, p.42. 2 – Ibid., p.45.
The Autonomy of Affect – Fashion as a Modern Virus
“…Operations that might be argued to be endemic to late-
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
instrumental. Third, affect has become part of how cities are understood. As cities are increasingly expected to have ‘buzz’, to be ‘creative’, and to generally bring forth powers of invention and intuition, all of which can be forged into economic weapons, so the active engineering of the affective register of cities has been highlighted as the harnessing of the talent of transformation.’ (1) Transformation, regeneration, rebranding – all parts of creating a certain scene in which people can identify themselves, as who they are, and even more importantly, the ‘who’ they strive to become. Today’s society revolves around the cult of individuality, or ones perception of it, which is something the capitalistic market has tapped into, (and initially, even co-created). The active engineering of the affective register of cities plays an important role in this process, which revolves a lot around sampling known concepts, we know this, we have seen it before and have learned how to react and feel about these concepts, very much like the training of feelings which comes with the movie industry of Hollywood. The preparatory groundwork has been done and the receptive audience of customers is easier to pinpoint, and an industry will follow which further enhances this rebranding of an area. Which brings us to SoFo, an area in Stockholm, where the rebranding has been taken so far it has now become a caricature of what it once was aiming for, ruled by symbolic materialism, only a shadow of resemblance to what it once was.
The areas self-proclaimed label as being bohemic, and described as ‘having a relaxed, yet highly aware atmosphere’ (2), an awareness that stretches all the way from hats and clothes, to the kind of foods one should eat, all to fit the collective individuality. Authenticity is not being created, it is purchased and identity is fulfilled through guidelines which perhaps lack actual substance, all the while anxiously embracing the (commercial) bohemian lifestyle and the romanticising of poverty. ‘…now affect is more and more likely to be actively engineered with the results that it is becoming something more akin to the networks of pipes and cables tat are of such importance to urban life, a set of constantly performing relays and junctions that are laying down all manner of new emotional histories and geographies.’ (3) By attempting to tap into and actively engineer the affective register, to orchestrate an affect, a possibility for a core and driving force of rebranding is uncovered. Steered by feelings, ruling over logic, the brands could now talk straight to your senses – a rebranding dream come true. - Sofie Andersson 1 - Nigel Thrift, ‘Spatialities of Feeling’ in Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, London: Routledge, 2008, p.172. 2 - http://www.visitstockholm.com/sv/gora/Tips/Bohemiska-SoFo 3 - Nigel Thrift, ‘Spatialities of Feeling’ in Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, London: Routledge, 2008, p.172.
The Active Engineering of the Affective Register and Rebranding
‘…What might have been painted as aesthetic is increasingly
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
of manners, with a range of parameters. Discipline through fashion by capitalism, using trends and consumerism, and the division of people into categories such as trendy/non-trendy, as a way of discipline. There is an ever-growing number of magazines, articles, tvshows, blogs etc dealing with the subject of fashion – what is trendy and not? Articles being read like the bible of the believers, items listed as ‘the latest must-have’ sold out in hours, the dread of not belonging, not being quite right. The anxiousness of falling down on the wrong side of the invisible line, like a modern time leper branded non-trendy. Consumerism is the dragon which fiery breath spread new trends like a disease, but there is no guard to stop them. Only the next in line will stop the previous, with ones rise, the others demise. The change of seasons and fashion, once a simple solution for capitalism to raise sales has now become the dedication and lifestyle, the main ambition to strive for. “…must never know whether he is being looked at at any one moment, but he must be sure that he may always be so…one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.” (1)
If discipline requires an inspector, one could state that the public, one and everyone is the inspector who will watch and see, who will evaluate and judge. If trends are seen as a kind of social discipline, where no-one wants to be the leper who is branded as abnormal, where dressing is more than ever a way of showing our belonging, then shopping is the main nutrient for this discipline. But without an appointed inspector, who will distribute the punishment? Or will the punishment come in a more abstract form, the feeling of not belonging, not yet branded a modern day leper, but close enough?
- Sofie Andersson
1 – Michael Foucalt, ‘Discipline and Punish’, Penguin Books, England, 1977, p.201.
Shopping as a Social Discipline
Social discipline can be interpreted and executed in a variety
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
The same strategy is applicable for the interior of the stores, where H&M commonly have all the models and sizes of their products accessibly on display in store. This would be the opposite in Stores like Prada or Gucci, for example Prada’s flagship store in New York is an open, vast space - with hardly any clothes visible, yet again the reduction of numbers. So what effect does this have on the customers?
“Institutions, then, not of confinement but of exhibition forming a complex of disciplinary and power relations…” (1)
“…In doing so, it translated these into exhibitionary forms which, in simultaneously ordering objects for public inspection and ordering the public that inspected, were to have a profound and lasting influence…” (2)
communication tool a store has access to, and therefore the most important. Displays are changed frequently, both in the windows and the interior of the store. The person in charge of this is the ‘Visual Merchandiser’ and quite often larger stores and chains have whole departments dedicated to the development of the window displays and interior of the store.
On a superficial level the display window is supposed to suggest an association and a feeling, without taking focus away from the clothes, however the role of the display window is a lot more intricate. Although on one side, attracting customers with the latest fashion, the other side is one of confinement which uses the disciplinary and power relations abstractly to divide the customers into wanted and non-wanted. The display window confinement is best illustrated through the examples of different brands, for example H&M versus Prada or Gucci. H&M typically has display windows with several mannequins, a lot of clothes and accessories, where Prada or Gucci usually has a display window with a significantly smaller amount of items, it may be a couple of mannequins or a few handbags, but reducing the number of items is the general strategy.
Confinement through display windows - the stores are choosing and ‘sorting’ through their customers via the design of the storefront display. The institution of exhibition takes a form, where while arranging objects for public inspection it orders and abstractly restrains the public which inspects it, and furthermore, the field is reset so the inspecting public also becomes the inspected.
- Sofie Andersson
1 – Tony Bennett, ‘The Birth of the Museum’, Routledge, England, 1995, p. 59. 2 – Ibid., p. 61.
Institution of Exhibition - The Display Window
The window display is perhaps the most powerful
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
each with its own laws: first of all the family, then school, … then the barracks…, then the factory, hospital from time to time, maybe prison, the model site of confinement.” (1)
“Control is short term and rapidly shifting, but at the same time continuous and unbounded, whereas discipline was long-term, infinite, and discontinuous. A man is no longer a man confined but a man in debt.” (2)
An important part of the organization and confinement of major sites is the role of the uniform. It is a classification instrument which ranges from the uniform used in schools, to the ones used in department stores and banks, the white coats of the hospital, the neat scarfs of the air stewardess, the factory workers overall and the colour of the prison inmates uniform. These are what one might say ‘the old suit’ of confinement, a visual means of confining people. The new surges of individualism, personal responsibility for your own faith and a greater disbelief in systems also calls for a new uniform. The answer from capitalism is the instilment of hunger for material things and for shopping, the hunger does not get replaced by satisfaction even when the money runs out, through the invention of credit cards the hunger continues; and hereby capitalism aids man in creating his own uniform of confinement. It seems that the new suit of confinement is in fact the invisible suit of debt.
- Sofie Andersson
1 - Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on Societies of Control’ in Negotiations: 19721990, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, p. 177. 2 – Ibid., p.181.
Control Societies and the Uniform of Confinement
“Individuals are always going from one closed site to another,
Coloured-In By:_________________________ Date:_________________________
time’ production – and ’just-in-time’ usually means things have to be ready in no time at all. Who sets the urgent pace according to which all others are measuring their progress? Or, rather: who sets the pace of planned obsolescence that keeps people buying the same product in slightly upgraded designs over and over again, allowing industry to thrive on the constant overproduction of what will essentially be tomorrow’s waste?” (1) Consumerism has enabled many of us to get used to getting what we want, when we want it. This fast paced world feeds us with never ending options of acquiring new, shiny things which come accompanied with a vague promise of bettering our lives. However, the desire for each object will eventually fade and the day when it is deemed redundant will come – which leads us to the shadowy side of the consumerism coin.
On the other side of the coin we find the ‘enablers’ of this glistening consumerism, and it ranges all the way from the labourers, who make clothes and shoes and electrical appliances and tea, sometimes underpaid, sometimes working in harmful health conditions, without regulations and support, to the ship breakers in Chittagong, Bangladesh who work under such poor conditions that tourists are not allowed near the site since the government want to keep it ‘under wraps’. Then there are things like the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, a mountain of approximately 100 million tons of plastic or twice the size of France, of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean, polluting and disturbing the marine life.
Consequently, maybe it is time to counteract the blindness created by consumerisms shine, and let us keep this thought in mind - if you are not paying for it, somehow, someone else is. “…May effectively create a different (and no less factual) reality in which the unrequested exuberance of desire – rather than demand or discipline – determines what is real. Unfortunately, even if you manage to shrug it off exuberantly, the dominant reality principle tends to find painful ways of reasserting itself. In this sense, one such painful reminder produced by the timing of high performance culture is the current global experience of divided, alienated time. Today, times is becoming progressively disjointed as the ‘developed’ countries push ahead into a science fiction economy of dematerialized labour and virtual capital – and simultaneously push the ‘developing’ countries centuries back in time by outsourcing manual and industrial labour that imposes working conditions on them from the times of early industrialisation.” (2)
- Sofie Andersson
1 -Jan Verwoert, ‘Exhaustion an Exuberance’ in Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, Sternberg Press, 2010, p. 35 2 – Ibid., p. 38.
Consumerism and the Other Side of the Coin
“We live and work in economies based on the concept of ’just-in-
Bibliography
Websites:
Brian Massumi, The Autonomy of Affect, in Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.
http://www.visitstockholm.com/sv/gora/Tips/Bohemiska-SoFo/
Gregory Seijworth and Melissa Gregg ‘An Inventory of Shimmers’ in Gregory Seijworth and Melissa Gregg eds. The Affect Theory Reader, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.
http://earthfirst.com/%E2%80%98hell-on-earth%E2%80%99in-india-the-lives-of-shipbreakers/
Gilles Deleuze, ‘The Diagram’, in The Logic of Sensation, London: Continuum, 2003. Jan Verwoert, ‘Exhaustion an Exuberance’ in Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want, Sternberg Press, 2010. Michael Foucalt, ‘Discipline and Punish’, Penguin Books, England, 1977. Nigel Thrift, ‘Spatialities of Feeling’ in Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect, London: Routledge, 2008. Tony Bennett, ‘The Birth of the Museum’, Routledge, England, 1995.
http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/portraiture/bacon/ francis_bacon.htm
Bibliography
Gilles Deleuze, ‘Postscript on Societies of Control’ in Negotiations: 1972-1990, New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
http://questgarden.com/104/43/7/100603110329/