The exhibition “Retail Apocalypse” at ETH Zurich (CH), from 26 February to 15 May 2020, deals with the history of retail architecture and examines the architectural form as part of an economic reality.
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The exhibition Retail Apocalypse investigates the history of retail architecture. It takes theoretical recourse to Frederic Jameson’s thesis that postmodernism is nothing more than the cultural logic of late capitalism. It explores how the early 1970s marked a new era in which culture has become integrated into commodity production generally. The exhibition looks back to “Le Bon Marché” as depicted by Félix Vallotton in the late nineteenth century, Friedrich Kiesler’s publication Contemporary Art Applied to the Store and Its Display of 1930, Gae Aulenti’s oblique display for Fiat in Zurich, or SITE’s stores for Best, as examples of the postmodern era. Shopping has become, as Rem Koolhaas argued in Harvard Guide to Shopping, the last remaining form of public activity. This seminal study was published almost two decades ago and, in the meantime, shopping has undergone even more drastic change.
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What role does shopping play in today’s cities?
In the twentieth century shopping was a major catalyst in city planning. But what role does shopping play in today’s cities? To be polemical, one might start with the “dead mall” (the failed shopping mall or big box store) on the one hand, and the “flagship store” on the other. What is the value of the brute material fact of the dead mall for contemporary architects? What potential does the condition of uselessness offer? The obsolescence of the shopping mall, ruthlessly defined by its program, offers degrees of freedom for architecture that resemble, or even constitute, a kind of autonomy. In contrast, “flagship stores” remain vital, although not necessarily for shopping per se. They serve as branding for luxury goods. Their semiotic function as signifiers feeds into ever increasing differentiation, even as they contribute to a kind of generic global wealth culture. Many of today’s most renowned architects have invested their architectural expertise in retail. Think of Herzog & de Meuron’s and Rem Koolhaas’s connection with Prada, David Chipperfield’s numerous luxury stores, Smiljan Radić’s catwalks for Celine or his recent design for Alexander McQueen, and David Adjaye’s luxury shopping mall in Beirut—to name but a very few.
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“Architecture proves to be a motor of seduction that aims to drive consumption and further the logic of capital.”
The exhibition will reflect on the question of how the value of architectural surface or language is determined. Architectural form is part of an economic reality and it creates surplus value. The artistic expression—the surface essentially—is therefore most certainly not commercially innocent, as demonstrated by retail applications. Architecture proves to be a motor of seduction that aims to drive consumption and further the logic of capital. Several writers who have addressed the relationship between architecture and value form a literary counterpart in the exhibition: JG Ballard’s novel Kingdom Come on violence and consumerism; Natasha Stagg’s Surveys, in which the protagonist leaves her job at the mall to become a digital influencer; or Janina Gosseye’s and Tom Avermaete’s study of the shopping mall’s influence on both high and pop culture.
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Retail Apocalypse
26 February – 15 May 2020
Opening: Tuesday, 25 February 2020, 6 pm
ETH Zurich, Hönggerberg
Curated by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen (ETH Zurich) in collaboration with Mark Lee (Harvard GSD)
Higher, better, faster – we live in a capitalist economy, one that fosters over-consumption; a modern economy that has to continuously step up production to survive. This vicious circle impacts the life of mankind and the whole biosphere. The changes that population growth and consumer capitalism cause on our planet are the theme of “Landscape of Consumption“, a film by the English photographer Karl Davies. The scenes in his production are mainly so depressing because he neither glosses over nor edits anything – he just reflects our everyday life.
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It is the middle of the night: garish lights flood the streets, groups of people cross over from side to side in movements like waves. The night-time scene of vivid advertising, music and city dwellers out shopping or eating on the go presumably stands for urbanity and quality of life. They turn night into day. While some work and produce products, others acquire products and consume. We ourselves are part of this; we let ourselves be carried along and away with it. But the feeling of excitement can soon subside, making way for a sense of disquiet and exhaustion – until, at last, we come to realise the consequences of such consumer behaviour.
Karl Davies, photographer and filmmaker from Bristol, captures precisely this sense of disquiet in his “Landscape of Consumption” production, a time-lapse short film consisting of more than 200,000 still images that he created on three continents. In this piece he evokes the changes that exponential population growth and consumer capitalism have on our planet. And not only mankind seems overtasked and overburdened by these never-ceasing phenomena, but most definitely the earth too.
Although the present capitalist-consumerist model has been accompanied by economic growth and improved living standards for most of the West – and still is – two aspects in particular are especially fatal: the unequal use of resources and the effects this has on the environment. If, for example, the whole world were to follow America’s example in terms of consumption, 5.4 planets would at present be required to supply the respective resources. Indeed, according to the Global Footprint Network, by July 2019 humanity had used as many resources as the earth needs a whole year to regenerate. We emit more carbon dioxide than forests and oceans are capable of absorbing, and fell more trees than can be replaced by new growth. As Greenpeace points out, 100 billion-plus garments – an unprecedented amount – were produced in 2014. By way of comparison, 10 kilograms of new clothing are bought by consumers in Germany every year, 16 kilograms in the USA and about two kilograms in Africa/ Middle East. The growing consumption of textiles in industrial states has grave environmental consequences in the countries where they are made, such as Bangladesh and China. As Karl Davies says: “For the first time in history, mankind’s primary issue is not scarcity, it is abundance.”
Watch here the time-lapse short film “The Landscape of Consumption” by Karl Davies.
The whole article about the film “The Landscape of consumption” can be found in topos 109.
