The Gospel of the Enlightened Consumer | Teemu Takatalo
The Gospel of the Enlightened Consumer (2012, 50’) is a video essay by the finnish artist Teemu Takatalo.
In September 2011 Teemu Takatalo’s consumption critical mural The Absolution of the Enlightened Consumer was censored and destroyed in a gallery, in Tampere, Finland by the producers of the exhibition. The painting consisted of painted company logos of nine business enterprises, having their shops in the same shopping mall with the gallery, and texts about negligence of their social and environmental responsibility programs.
The brutal act against critical but harmless painting evoke some lame public discussion, but first of all it brought up some crucial questions: why on the whole is business life trying to convince us by its’ virtue? If the destructive character of the capitalistic economy is a generally accepted fact, why does someone who admits this still kneels and stoops in front of the altars of capitalism?
By analyzing this Takatalo figured out a wider conceptual error that exists in consumption and capitalistic production: the both are structured in a way that reminds remarkably a concept of the Christian theology, even though capitalism and the western culture are nowadays primary understood as secular.
As a capitalistic market is a platform for most of human interactions; the Christian concept of goodness has transformed in immaterial qualities of products, good deeds are done by consuming and absolution happens in a super market instead of a church. However, despite of all this goodness, the capitalist market and production has been creating a growing number of serious global problems. These dynamics created new political subject: an enlightened consumer.
Teemu Takatalo is an Athens based Finnish visual artist, a musician and a writer.
Curateor: Sebastian Boulter
The film is in the greek language.
In cooperation with the Finnish Institute at Athens.