“Waste not, want not!” Ancient proverbCan retailers learn a lesson from the art world? Is conspicuous consumption and gross consumerism high art? The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) thinks it may be. Currently on exhibit (until Sept. 7) is “Waste Not,” a conceptual installation by the Beijing artist Song Dong. The exhibit is the talk of the town, and the lines to see the show thread through the museum like a ball of untwisted yarn. The consciousness-raising installation consists of the complete contents of his parents’ rural home in China, which was amassed over 50 years during which the Chinese concept of “wu jin qi yong” or "waste not" was a prerequisite for survival. (A time when individuals could not amass wealth, but could collect things in reciprocity, the harsh years of the Cultural Revolution.)
The contents of the Dong home are laid out systematically and categorically on the floor, in artfully constructed piles and rows. It’s as neat and orderly as a J. Crew catalog, if J. Crew could catalog our lives. The Dong family treasures are ordinary items like empty water bottles, and partially used tubes of tooth paste. The Dong family was not the Beales. They were a typical family, no different in many respects from you or I.
Much is made of Chinese consumer goods and imports invading America--this is the exception to the rule! Shamefully, it seems like the Chinese and Americans have an awful lot in common.
The exhibit is set up in a maze-like configuration so that you can meander about the contents (almost as if you are in a garden of things) and get so close to the items that you could pick them up in your hands like a rose--but please don’t! Children find the loot almost irresistible. There are piles of clothes, piles of medicinals and piles of soap--some rise so high as to suggest a cityscape. Then you come upon all the shoes, all the shoe boxes, all the plastic bags, all the designer shopping bags, all the dishes, chopsticks and flatwear. There are empty water jugs and empty water bottles, not to mention hundreds of bottle tops, all the toys, including dolls with missing limbs and rotting stuffed animals. There are rows and rows of pens, bundled twine and jump ropes. Stacks of poetic empty birdcages, stacks of magazines, stacks of pans and woks. The unfathomable and incomprehensible waste makes one reconsider the values of Capitalism. I’ll warn you in advance, the exhibit is voyeuristic, as if you are walking through someone’s mind, and then you realize it’s yours.
By placing the items on the floor, viewers cast their eyes downwards in amazement of all the “stuff” that has been collected. The exhibit creates a kind of phrenetic anxiety. While the contents may seem foreign at first glance, and therefore exotic (ergo easy to dismiss), ultimately we see ourselves, our own social disease, and hear our inner monologue, “What if everything I owned was laid out for the world to see, how would I be scrutinized? What would people think about me?”
So let me ask you: do you save empty margarine containers, bubble wrap, tissue paper? Do you hold onto plastic grocery bags, rubber bands? Do you have a jar of paper clips or dead felt tip pens? Would you want your neighbors to see how many pairs of shoes you own and how few pairs of underwear you have? It starts to get scary when you think about what’s “stored” in your closet, “stored” in your drawers, and how many cardboard boxes of stuff you have squirreled away in your basement, attic or garage. We are trained to be compulsive “savers” and sheep-like shoppers.
Now some back story...Dong’s father was once an officer in the Cultural Revolution, but was accused of being a spy and remanded to prison for years. This plummeted the family into deprivation, poverty and shame. Grief-stricken, Dong’s mother compensated by hoarding. Years later Dong’s father was released, and ordered to work in a button factory until his death in 2002. Dong’s mother believed that by obtaining things she might alleviate her grief, creating a false kind of attachment to things--what we here in the States call “retail therapy.” Retail is based on the precepts of replaceable goods, disposable items. American retail is based on the notion of the power and amount of things as being tantamount to our status. Think about Bed, Bath & Beyond, Office Max and Amazon. Having more means we are valued more. We are indoctrinated to order the economical jumbo size, and a second one for half price. Even octo-moms are deified for over-production. Today’s consumer is way ahead of the retailers. Our homes, our pocketbooks and our office cubicles are jammed full of relatively meaningless stuff. We are more interested in having less and having better. Retailers do yourself a favor and get yourself to MoMA to see what your customers really think about “stuff.” It may make you question what you sell and why.
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