Saturday, March 31, 2007

Double Quantum

You know you are in trouble when you start blogging your hotel room, but still I was seeing double everywhere and could not help documenting. Of course "Two objects that are next to each other and almost the same but not quite" is a pretty old contemporary-art technique for making something that is not interesting interesting. Then, the next day I found myself in the IKEA that sits on the highway fields of boredom between Geneva and Lausanne. Does this place have a name? But of course, it's OutletLand. Like everywhere else in the world, where there is Ikea, there is also H&M, outlets of brands you don't care about, mega-ga-gas stations and lots of parking lots. Of course Ikea has made apartments all over the planet instantly recognizable, because they are all furnished with the same stuff so you feel at home wherever, or you feel at home nowhere because everybody else has the same furniture as you (oh you have the blabla couch, five euros huh? greeeeat), and then they wear the same H&M tshirt and call themselves fashionistas or whatever madonna thinks, it's the Swedish globanalization of the world. But even more strange (and I don't want to get too theoretical here) but rather unheimlich are the Ikea stores themselves: Here you are, walking in from the swiss countryside and suddenly you are transported back to your local Ikea: The same 2 euro pillows are in the same corner after the same staircase that has the same sign hanging casually announcing the same easter version of what you bought last Christmas but you gave it away so now you have to buy it all over again. I guess this is what they call Quantum Theory: You are here but you are also there and everywhere, the here is the same as there, there is no here, there is not one you but endless versions of you-shoppers buying the same but different thing that they have probably have at home, double, quantum.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

today's artists either work on the internet or on the dna.

Andreas Angelidakis said...

It's not really an either/or situation

Anonymous said...

ok, we just emphasized.

gregorios pharmakis said...

a work to do on IKEA, absolutely. It is an exterior empirical internet place