20. Februar 2008
Noam Chomsky argues that late capitalism is about
using surplus value to create products which we don't really need that clutter
and confuse our lives. What would he think of "Design and the Elastic
Mind," hot curator Paola Antonelli's new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art?
Paola was the people's choice at the opening Tuesday
night, where hundreds of geeks and the people who date them waited for an hour
in line, extending down MoMA's escalators, to get up to the sixth floor and
ogle an exhibition that resembles a trade show for security firms and would-be
secret agents at your local convention center. Dan Graham and Richard Meier
were among those imagining the near future of nerdvana, which is already here.
Stupid ecological tricks vie with the elimination of
privacy as major themes of this robotic curation. Paola presents, for example,
a white coffin designed to convert the energy of a decomposing body into power
to animate a white vibrating sex toy guaranteed to keep a widow very merry.
There’s actually a white vibrator next to the coffin in the show. On the
opposite side of life's divide, an inflatable belly pillow allows a woman who
is having a baby with a surrogate mother to grow her abdomen across time and
space at the same rate as the pregnant surrogate.
Those needing a rest from such mind-bending concepts
need only drive their cars into a personalized roadside sleep tent, which
reduces tired, accident prone drivers to a state of hypnotic, REM sleep. But be
careful what you do in there, or the fiber optic tree with a thousand eyes will
spy on you for the cops. (These are actual products in the show, not the
ravings of a spotless mind).
Are you paranoid? Then don a "riskwatch,"
which helpfully indicates the level of combined risk, from terrorism to global
warming, via a series of blinking colors, wherever you alight in the world, the
perfect parting gift for that Homeland Security buff in the gadgety interface
that used to be your life.
Unfortunately, the interactive elements in the
"Elastic" show are not as innovative as those at, say, the Children's
Museum. There you have a digital room where you can make little birds and bunnies
with your hands, the way you did in bed as a child, and a digital stick gizmo
with which you can write your name in big letters on a wall. For true
"elasticity," go to your neighborhood five-and-dime and buy that true
design marvel, a Gumby. Do they still make them?
"Design and the Elastic Mind," Feb. 24-May 12, 2008,
at the Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10019
CHARLIE FINCH is co-author of
Most Art Sucks: Five Years of Coagula (Smart Art Press).