Bughouse’s Future Fossils Series brings into stark relief Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism and Baudrilliard’s exploration of cultural objects as sign systems of identity manufacture.
In Marx’s critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things (commodities and money).
In the work of the semiotician Baudrillard, commodity fetishism is used to explain subjective feelings towards consumer goods in the “realm of circulation”, that is, among consumers. Baudrillard was especially interested in the cultural mystique added to objects by advertising, which encourages consumers to purchase them as aids to the construction of their personal identity. In For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (1972), Baudrillard develops his notion of the sign that, like Debord’s notion of spectacle, aims to elaborate on Marx’s theory.
The Future Fossils by Bughouse series imagines what kind of artifacts future civilizations will come across when exploring their past and our present. It is comprised of ‘fossilized’ technology such as an Atari joystick, Polaroid camera, Rollieflex, Nikon SLR and Technics turntable. Interestingly enough, the Future Fossils series doesn’t just focus on the 21st century, but simply the age of technology in general which has, perhaps more than any other, been the age of commodity fetishism.
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