Multimedia Installation
"Commodity Fetish" is comprised of two videos and a 10 page creative written piece. This project won the Smith College Mary Augusta Jordan Prize, awarded for the most original work in prose or verse by a senior.
The first video depicts me coming across and eating a plate of spaghetti in a mall. The second video depicts me coming across and eating a full rotisserie chicken in a snow-filled alley outside of a mall. The written component os a retelling of a "Hansel and Gretel," mainly taking place in a mall, with the images depicted in the videos serving as key scenes.
Drawing from the Marxist framework by the same name, "Commodity Fetish" explores the consumption of objects produced through obscured human labor and social relations. Inside this framework, the value of a commodity is understood as intrinsic and self-contained, rather than relating to its origin. In this piece, meals from unknown sources are consumed ferociously. The setting highlights full and vacant sites of mass consumption.