Object Abuse…, Cerlin Karunaratne
[June 26, 2012]
I do think about objects quite a lot.
I wonder if it is ok to keep making them and I think I expect too much of them. I try not to, and allow them to be but sometimes it is hard. Sometimes as with people you are aware of what they could do but they are what they are.
Is it us abusing the object or does the object abuse us by its presence?
Do we have a right to expect objects to do work by their mere presence? Is it abusive to give an object meaning without its consent?
Things are constantly done to objects without their permission. Planned obsolescence is one such thing. Is it an abusive action to plan something’s demise in advance?
Does an objects presence cause pollution – practical, visual or ethical? –
Practical pollution- Its use value is not equivalent to its material value not in a monetary sense but an ontological sense. How do we judge that? Should we judge that?
Visual pollution – Can there be such a thing or it is just a matter of taste, style, waste?
Ethical – to have an object exist is giving a strand of human thought form – there are many outcomes for thoughts but to become objects is such a definite action. This action then has an implication. Not to judge in a moral way or in any way but going back to the fact that the form exists.
I read an interesting essay last week – Behold the Invisible by Keja Silverman. –
I think this bit is interesting in relation to objects although it is written about film.
….. are predicated upon the assumption that every technology is also an ideology, and therefore what Althusser would call an “apparatus”; that in order to be effective this ideology must hide itself and that the best way to neutralize it is to make it visible. Invisibility is a synonym for “mystification.” Visibility signifies the opposite: “demystification,” and -by implication- “knowledge”
Can the above also be true in relation to objects? Not to imbue an object with meaning but to look at what it is and what it tries to say about the knowledge it contains (duration of time, the space it occupies)
The object of the day is the Olympic torch! How abused is that object. All the things it has to mean. The roads are shut today and people will line the streets to see it pass. There are concerts, and dancing, all in its name. It is very confusing. What does the torch think?
Do objects matter or are they just matter?
Cerlin Karunaratne 2012
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