Another Limited Rebellion: Illustrated Obsessive Consumption

Monday, January 14, 2008

Artist Kate Bingaman-Burt has been documenting her consumer purchases with a lovely daily illustration for several years. You can keep track of them all on her blog Obsessive Consumption: What Did You Buy Today.

Thanks Mica!

amanda bee said...: I love the wonderful obsessiveness of Kate's work, which I discovered in San Francisco a few months ago, but I haven't been able to wrap my head around art without activism. Am I being too literal?

I know (or I think I know) that I'm supposed to take art on its face as art. I think I even think that her work does add to a civic discussion about stuff and how much of it we use. I think that art matters for exactly that reason; I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means for politics for a city like mine (New York) to let its artists be pushed out, what artists, especially political artists, mean to dissent and to civic conversations. I think all these things and then I look at Kate's work, at two years of drawings, and I want to see something change. Fewer new potted plants from Lowes, fewer sodas a the airport. Less cosmetics. I want to see her talk about how this project has made her think differently about what she consumes and where it goes and comes from.

I can't look at her work without wanting her to say something articulate about how much stuff she buys. And yet, I can't stop looking at her work.; Thursday, 28 February, 2008
Amanda said...: PS, I think the answer is that, yes, I am being absurdly literal and that Kate's work is not "without activism."; Friday, 29 February, 2008