The Commodity Catalogue

The film is the second part of a trilogy about representation, art and politics. In the previous film, The Signature of Certain Things (2022), the author dealt with the social role of art. In this essay, he encourages us to view images as commodities. But is it even possible to exclude art from this point of view? The very form of the film, which slyly follows the logic of commodified and multiplying images, becomes a hint to the answer.“Low resolution, distorted colours, an obsolete frame rate, errors and interferences. All of these are signs of VHS analogue video, which this film, of course, is not. It is merely a manifestation of consumerist aesthetics. Old images pretend to be new. New images pretend to be old. The form of art follows the logic of products and uses it to critique itself, but that’s about everything that’s happened so far.”