Mark Selby - Artist Portfolio

----> artist's writing

The proliferation of commodities, serving a multitude of desires (or illusionistically defined 'needs' through marketing strategies), attempts to mark contemporary culture as the realisation of an idealistic vision whereby any want can be nourished - heaven on earth. Consumer objects have been organised into an economic order, from base (mass-produced) objects to one-off designs, what Baudrillard describes as the "model/series" distinction, creating an aspirational system inviting us to compete amongst one another for fulfilment. Fulfilment here seems to be a desire to create an externalised identity, signified by one's purchased objects and one that must be inherently individual (to a point at which now, no object is bought for its sole utility value).

The system elicits that by partaking in it, which we seemingly all must do, the pre-supposed individuality we aim for is nothing but an illusion. In terms of the capitalist economic, should we be able to reach a definitive clarification of our identity through 'things' then we no longer require the addition of more 'things' to the system, as seen in the law of diminishing returns. To combat this and continually refresh our desires - differentiation, branding and competition play important factors in the system.

"It is quite possible for each person to feel unique even though everyone is alike: all that is needed is a pattern of collective and mythological projection - in other words, a model" 1

This projection moves at great speed, at seemingly exponential pace. I find it impossible to keep up with the raft of new technologies in material / economic terms and also on a level of functionality as objects become increasingly abstract. The operational practices of the system seem out of my control, yet as a "producer" (of economic labour, in artistic terms or otherwise) I am constantly participating in it. Marx describes human beings as being under a 'mystical veil', a state of alienation,

"... a state in which their own creations appear to them as alien, hostile forces and in which instead of controlling their creations, they are controlled by them." 2

Our alienation is also from one another, in tandem with the object or 'creation'. Contemporary communication technologies are advocated for their ability to unitise, to create a liberal, democratic space at the avant-garde of Western culture. Yet the need for physical interaction is reduced, speaking reduced to 'text' or email, fragmenting social relationships (which simultaneously re-enforces the system by emphasising the crisis of identity it feeds on).

Instances of communal expression, of sennus communis, seem relatively few. By exposing, denouncing or deriding existing social or cultural systems (as in satire) one can set up, as a comic technique, and hence an artistic one, this moment of reversal. A critique of new technologies by interchanging its properties with those of its binary dialectic permits a glimpse of an alternative. We are all aware of technologies' abilities, its intended functions but we are not always aware of how they come about (from whom and with what intention) and also what we lose in that process. Humour, as in art, allows us a "pathos of distance". 3

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1 The System of Objects, Jean Baudrillard
2 Marx : A Short Introduction, Peter Singer
3 The Pathos of Distance, Felicity Lunn (from cat. When Humour Becomes Painful)