The use of cultural tools to criticise consumerism is as old as consumerism itself. Artistic critiques of capitalism date back to Germany’s socially engaged expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s known as New Objectivity. The progressive representatives of New Objectivity engaged in their first critiques of consumerism at a time of constant economic crisis and economic downturns, which eventually proved fatal to the Weimar Republic. New Objectivity was similarly adopted by Czechoslovak avant-garde artists with close ties to German culture, including the painters Adolf Hoffmeister, Antonín Pelc and Otakar Mrkvička. Sharp criticism of consumerism can also be found in the early slapstick films of Charlie Chaplin and, in Czechoslovakia, in the theatrical revues and film comedies of Voskovec and Werich and in other early films that, paradoxically, were a product of consumer culture. In the United States during the McCarthy era, pop art focused on the widespread consumerism that had sprung from the post-war economic boom, when the increased purchasing power of the middle and working classes resulted in increased consumption. Critiques of consumerism were of course present in all European social and artistic movements of the 1960s, including Viennese Actionism and Arte Povera, or the French New Wave and Italian neorealism in cinema.
In the West, following the rise of neoliberalism in the late 1970s (as subsequently expressed by Thatcherism and Reaganomics), critiques of consumerism entered the cultural mainstream. Few films, theatre plays, books or logotype designs of the time could avoid the influence of consumerism. Naturally, this critique could also be found in the Eastern Bloc, where it responded to half-hearted attempts by countries in the Soviet sphere of influence to create the conditions for consumer culture – in an attempt, after the revolutionary year of 1968, at placating a public dissatisfied with the suppression of earlier democratic efforts at transforming socialism. Examples of this critique include the art and happenings of the so-called Moscow Conceptualists. These tendencies became radicalised after the collapse of state socialism and the subsequent imposition of economic neoliberalism using so-called shock therapy, which broke society down into individuals, employees and competitors, and turned citizens into consumers. One of the most distinctive artistic responses to the new consumerism in the former Soviet Union was by the Voina art group: on International Workers’ Day (1 May) in 2007, the group’s members engaged in an art action titled Let’s Strike at Globalisation with Homeless Cats, during which they threw angry stray cats at workers at several McDonald’s franchises in the capital of Russia, which at the time was unsuccessfully healing from the trauma of its failed economic transformation and the oligarchisation of the state… which thus brings us to the difficult situation we face today.
In view of current international developments, the above-described works from the beginning of the century look somewhat ridiculous. At a time of reignited colonial wars and struggles over spheres of influence, massive military assaults by a powerful aggressor without regard for civilian casualties (or even with the intent to cause such casualties); at a time of a massive arms build-up and the growing power of the arms and fossil fuel industries; at a time of an increasingly open struggle for resources caused by an energy, economic and ultimately environmental crisis of apocalyptic proportions; at a time of the seeming inevitability of global conflict and the imminent breakdown of the global climate, past critiques of consumerism have shown themselves to be outdated and out of touch.
Sculptor Petr Stibral’s monument is thus not a monument to consumerism, but a “monument to consumerism”, said while wiggling the middle and index fingers on both hands in the air like a rabbit twitching its ears. Although Stibral is aware that capitalism and its various manifestations are re-sponsible for the current disastrous state of the world, his artistic commentary offers an ambivalent view of consumerism. He shows what future commemorations of the present day and of recent decades – when the base of our (in many cases only of our) Maslow Pyramid was still secure – might look like. According to Stibral, one day we will look back on the consumerist era with nostalgia and with a wistful smile, like remembering a long-extinct species of a once widespread and cute but tasty bird, like the dodo. Within the context of today’s crisis, his monument is a kind of look back at the years of relative abundance which, despite the increasingly visible signs of future collapse, were a period of plenty and stability. Not coincidentally, it looks like something from director John Hillcoat’s post-apocalyptic film The Road (2009), which was based on a novel by the famous American writer Cormac McCarthy.
In our increasingly dynamic world with its many variables such as artificial intelligence or the robotisation of labour, we cannot read from a crystal ball or rely on accurate predictions, but one thing is absolutely certain: perhaps technology will be used for the benefit of humanity and not against it; perhaps progress will win out, and states, nations and people will find a sense of progressive solidarity in the face of a shared global catastrophe; or perhaps a slow and deep descent into feudalism awaits us, replete with combat drones, environmental catastrophe and warlords battling over the scraps of ever-shrinking resources – but whatever the case, there will be no more room for consumerism. For these reasons, Peter Stibral’s “Monument to Consumerism” is not (just) a cynical smirk but a serious reflection on the contemporary monument in the traditional sense of the word, which derives from the root “monere” – to remind. It is a memento, a reminder of a vanishing era.
The exhibition was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Statutory City of Hradec Králové.
