An exhibition in and around Maastricht’s shopping centre + a one day symposium on consumerism + the one-day supra market [1997]
The map of Maastricht marking various sites where artists work could seen/ Dick Hebdige lectures/ One Day Supra Market sticker: a place where commodities could converge /the central registration balie at the One Day Supra Market where the symposium was held.
Guy Debord wrote in, The Society of the Spectacle, that "the world we see is the world of the commodity". Visible everywhere, it moves elusively like an apparition able to assume a variety of guises. Manifested in everything from dishwashing powder, to a luxury handbag, to an automobile, the commodity story is not one of objecthood, but of dreams, images, exchange and exclusion. A Scenic DeTour Through Commodity Culture was a project that looked these very complex social relations. Artists, theoreticians and graphic designers were invited to work both physically and thematically around the subject and space of consumerism.
The Symposium
The symposium was held at the Jan van Eyck Akademie and the artist, Apolonija Sustersic, designed the interior conference space. At the symposium speakers traced various social texts by following the ways in which commodities are woven into our lives as a process rather than a product. Rachel Bowlby and Ellen Lupton made a historical analysis of how commodities infiltrate and influence our daily lives and homes through grocery shopping and household maintenance. Sadie Plant spoke about the drug trade and the routes it laid out for luxury consumer goods, such as spices and herbs. She referred to heroine as the commodity par excellence, in that addiction is an impulse which requires no advertising for arousing impetus. And Dick Hebdige looked at sites for intervention, reappropriation and possibly what the Situationists referred to as détournement in rave culture. In circumscribing these specific territories of the commodity the symposium opened up routes for critical manoeuvrability and debate.
Dick Hebdige is Dean and Professor of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts and author of, After the Masses and The Impossible Object.
Rachel Bowlby is Professor of English at Sussex University and author of Shopping With Freud and Soft Sell.
Sadie Plant is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and author of, The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in A Postmodern Age.
Ellen Lupton is curator of the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City, and author of Mechanical Brides. She has co-authored with J. Abbott Miller, The Bathroom, The Kitchen, And The Aesthetics of Waste: A Process of Elimination, and Design, Writing, Research: Writing On Graphic Design.
The Exhibition
The exhibition ran from January 17-31 and took place in and around Maastricht's central shopping district. The exhibition, with 30 participants involved over 20 sites in the city centre. The locations varied from display windows, to department store interiors, to billboard’s on the street. The location of each person's work was marked on a map, charting an alternative tour or route through the city. As a part of the exhibition Lennaart van Oldenborgh was invited to curate video programs for two different hi-fi shops in the city.(link to image of in hi-fi shop) The map was distributed at the V.V.V. tourist office, the Jan van Eyck Akademie, and participating stores. (link to the image of the map)
The following artists, designers and visual theorists participated in the exhibition:
Tariq Alvi (Britain)
Anke Haarman (Germany)
Femke Snelting (Netherlands)
Annie Toop (Britain)
Michael Gibbs (Britain)
Lennaart van Oldenborgh (Netherlands)
Guillaume Paris (France)
Isa Rosenberger (Austria)
Riek Sijbring (Netherlands)
Apolonija Sustersic (Slovenia)
Stefaan Decostere (Belgium)
Polly Gould (Britain)
Cesare Davolio (Italy)
Paco Freire (Spain)
Niels Biersteker (Netherlands)
Elena Prado (Spain)
Judith Williamson(Britain)
Linda Pollack (United States)
Joan Braderman (United States)
Anke Schäfer (Germany)
Sut Jhally (United States)
George Barber (Britain)
Anneke Saveur (Netherlands)
Donna Confetti (Australia)
Aloys van den Berk (Netherlands)
Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland)
Markus Muntean and Adi Rosenblum (Austria)
Gitte Villesen (Denmark)
Henk van der Giessen (Netherlands)
Dana Master (U.S.A.)
The One-Day SupraMarket
The One-Day SupraMarket was held next to and in conjunction with the symposium at the Jan van Eyck Akademie. Operating as a bridge between the symposium and the exhibition, the SupraMarket functioned as a hybrid space where the multiple facets of the event could coexist and even be confused. The SupraMarket was filled with goods from the participating shops, artists and speakers. This meant books by Hebdige, Plant, Bowlby and Lupton were on sale alongside Impostor Products made by Annie Toop, a gift pack of videos by Pipilotti Rist and brightly coloured coffee mugs from a participating local department store. Also up for offer in this mixture of items was a 1960’s three-button shark skin suit owned by Dick Hebdige that playfully pointed to his status as a cult personality. The borders of the market itself could not be contained as Guillaume Paris’s perfumed fountains spilled their scent throughout the air and there was a faint but audible rumbling noise coming from the running of videos on multiple monitors. With this mingling of wares, there was a degree of irreverence in the One-Day SupraMarket that disarmed visitors and encouraged them to interact both with the objects and amongst each other.
The project was funded through and hosted by the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht. The main sponsors were the Ministry of OCenW, the SNS Bank and the Municipality of Maastricht.
