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Statement
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Ethan Breckenridge
“Appearance from one point of view is reality from another point of view.”
- Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life, Vol. 2
Actual TV Ad… A scientist, after driving his electric/eco friendly go-cart like car to an observatory, looks through his telescope to discover an apocalypse-heralding asteroid tumbling towards the earth. In a heartbeat he is online finding his nearest Hummer dealer, and then off in his go-cart to the dealership…
The suspension or postponement of progressive social ideals (generalized here as scientist-cum-survivalist) in theatrical, exemplary circumstances, allows in this case General Motors Corporation – but in most instances, globalized corporations - to brand selfish and excessive behavior as a natural instinct at odds with a disinterested pursuit of a progressive idea of humanity. This reaction becomes awakened by fear. However, the rhetoric of a manufactured natural as a producer of the real exists in an age-old opposition to the progressive ones it dismisses. Thus, progressive ideals always leave the rhetorical door open for an appeal to nature, insofar as the methodology of these higher purposes (to the advantage of others) define themselves as solely cultural in relation to a construction of nature. Ideas of what is natural or the real are, as we know extremely powerful and persuasive.
The development of these ideas creates an artificial platform that all discussion, no matter what opinion or side is taken, is held to. Theodore Adorno wrote "whereas art opposes society, it is nevertheless unable to take up a position beyond it; it achieves opposition only through identification with that against which it remonstrates." So, in art as in life it is the act of opposition we then can never move beyond. Not only is art’s general opposition limited in its reach beyond what it opposes, but also its antagonistic relationship in effect is dependent on the terms defined by what it opposes. More to the point, it is the conventional strategy of the established acts of "opposition" that is incompatible with any real notion of progress. I am interested in the presentation and rhetoric of social systems: transitory places and objects, office plants, hallways, shelving units and filing structures among others. These objects and architectural motifs, all facilitate a stylized encounter with the everyday, where the literal and metonymic locate and emphasize the metaphoric. In the end, the work never exclusively becomes a representation of an experience, or a literal object, rather, the division and displacement of both.
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