Materialism and Mass Society

Posted by Benjamin on: 09.26.2007 /

Nathan over at Compassion in Politics has kindly granted us permission to repost his recent post on materialism and mass society. Thankyou Nathan! I really encourage you to check out the full set of photos of chris jordan’s work–it’s pretty sobering.

Current TV is featuring Chris Jordan’s work in segment entitled “Art of Consumption“ Jordan takes on materialism and mass soceity by examinging handguns, SUVs, plastics, cell phones, prisons, mail order catalogs, and the war in Iraq. Building Blocks (above) “Depicts nine million wooden ABC blocks, equal to the number of American children with no health insurance coverage in 2007.” Chris’s commentary suggests:

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to affirm and sanctify the crucial role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming. My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images.

I just wish we could see how truly expansive these works were. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke to this issue and his words ring true even today. King proclaimed, “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism, are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.” Thoughts? What might a Christian response look like? Cans Seurat: “Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.”