Gallery: Consumption

digital drawing by Anna Kaplan

mixed media by Anderson Peguero

photograph by Emma Noelle 

collage by Charlotte Force

photography by Julia Girardoni

film by Trinity Lester

When consulting the idea of consumption I felt myself wanting to film the personal processes of going online shopping. As the idea progressed, I began to recall that so many of the places I may go to shop online were recently exposed for taking part in sweatshops. This led me to do some research on companies that I may not know were involved in the use of these abusive and unfair factories.

The video is of my screen, on the side you can see an array of desktop icons. Each of the icons shows a store that has been recognized as having sweatshops. These stores are then opened in tabs and throughout the video I take the time to explore their site. During the video I genuinely just clicked on what I was interested in, what looked worth clicking on, and what suited my needs. This became harder to do with the constant reminder of the sweatshops in the upper right background and left side of my desktop.

The video running is of myself eating chips to show what I feel is the most basic level of
consumption. For me the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the topic is eating. So in the video I eat (quite impolitely and a little wildly) to show that basic primal consumption that I first thought of.

The audio is a mash up of my crunching over the hectic sounds of a factory. This ties the
clothing back to the industrial while the reminder of my chewing and my personal presence remains.

Lastly, the rose colored filter increases in opacity with each odd jump or break that I randomly placed in the video. The filter reminded me of the common saying “to see life through rose colored glasses,” because here it was difficult for me to look past the harsh reality of sweatshops that these clothes were made in.

paintings and sculptures by Laura Isabel Dabalsa

pen and ink drawing by Galiba Gofur