Finding a thread: response

Again, from the car conversation this morning.

Objects for a new form of commodity therapy
Following on from the loafers conversation and Laura's post here, the projects that we're talking about are looking at how artifacts, systems and material cultures can give us some sort of relief from the emptiness of contemporary living..

Yes, I think that's completely right.

They all involve a search for meaning in the construction of the extra-ordinary, they involve activites, actions and experiences that re-design our own position to our environment.

Like the initial impetus behind us working together, we're design a form of self-help or therapy. How do we design object therapy for the over-consumed?

That's what I was saying to Jimmy the other day... that the link between the projects is us, and issues underlying the fact that we got together to do this in the first place. We are screwed up, and all of these ideas are forms of object/action based therapy. One way to approach it is to give the projects labels as treatments I suppose.

The problem with consumption is tricky though. It's the Fight Club dilemma. If you fight against something, you can't then turn round and promote it.

I hate materialism. The desire for stuff, which fuels the need for money, which makes us all into work-horses for the people who pay us AND NOT for ourselves. The fact that I can't make money doing what I would like to do, and so I have to do something else to be financially OK. The fact that success is equated with financial surplus and I feel looked down upon because I don't own a house... These feelings make me anxious and upset with the world. There is nothing wrong with me or my life, but I am made feel as if there is. Don't get me started on "holidays" as a concept.

How therefore, can I put things into the world for people to want?

Commodity Therapy cannot be the right way. A commodity is something which can be bought and sold, but not all things traded are commodities (I don't think). Somehow I feel we are all using this word in a different way.

Wikipedia: Commodity (Marxism)

Characteristics of commodity
"Man really attains the state of complete humanity when he produces, without being forced by physical need to sell himself as a commodity."
— Che Guevara [1]

In Marx's theory, a commodity (Ware in German) is something that is bought and sold. It has value, which represents a quantity of human labor. Because it has value, implies that people try to economise its use. A commodity also has a use value, an exchange value and a price.

* It has a use value because, by its intrinsic characteristics, it can satisfy some human need or want, physical or ideal. By nature this is a social use value, i.e. the object is useful not just to the producer but has a use for others generally.

* It has an exchange value, meaning that a commodity can be traded for other commodities, and thus give its owner the benefit of others' labor (the labor done to produce the purchased commodity).

* Price is then the monetary expression of exchange-value (but exchange value could also be expressed as a direct trading ratio between two commodities without using money).

According to the labor theory of value, product-values in an open market are regulated by the average socially necessary labour time required to produce them, and price relativities are ultimately governed by the law of value.

Illustration
To understand the concept of a commodity, consider a chair. It is a commodity if the chair is a tradable product of human work possessing a social use-value. By contrast, a fallen log of deadwood sat upon in the forest is not a commodity, as it was not produced by human work for the purpose of trade. A chair created by a hobbyist as a gift to someone is not a commodity. Nor is a chair a commodity (as a chair) if its only use would be as firewood (unless one purchases a chair specifically to chop it up for firewood). A chair that nothing could sit on, has no use-value, and cannot be a commodity. An ornamental chair might yet however, have value.

I think the word commodity is wrong right now. It has political and economic connotations that we are not ready for. Therapy = yes.