Materialism reveals the dimensions of our materialistic society
Products such as a phone, a lightbulb, or a water bottle are reduced to parallelepipeds of the exact amounts of raw materials from which they are made
Materialism is an ongoing research project by Studio Drift with the goal of understanding and reflecting on the materials and products that we surround ourselves with.
Studio Drift is an Amsterdam-based art studio focused on exploring the relationship between humans, nature, and technology. Materialism strives for contemplation of raw materials and confronts us with an unseen and elementary level of objects and the materials they are composed of.
Products such as a phone, a lightbulb, or a water bottle are reduced to parallelepipeds of the exact amounts of raw materials from which they are made, creating a 21st-century cubist, deconstructivist sculptures out of everyday products while displaying the proportions and variety of ingredients in each product recipe.
Materialism can be viewed as a contemporary approach to the 20th-century abstract art such as the paintings of Malevich, or Mondrian, where the goal is to make the essential nature of the world visible.
Human curiosity and its desire to investigate, have always pushed us to comprehend the world’s materiality and humans’ relationship to it.
Despite this urge, contemporary society is overwhelmed and saturated with a variety of objects, forcing a state of human disconnection with the materials, its sources, processes or impacts.
By deconstructing familiar objects we solely recognize by their function, Studio Drift with their project Materialism makes a clear statement of how much matter is extracted from the earth in order to fabricate these products.
Raw materials extraction and control are at the center of diverse climate change and geopolitical tensions. While we tend to think of these as affairs for politicians or big industry leaders, we are all part of the problem. Our impact as consumers reinforces the complex systems of resource extraction, labor, manufacturing, and distribution.
Materialism reveals the dimensions of our materialistic society, reflecting on our unrestrained use of the precious resources we continue to irresponsibly extract and dispose of products with little thought associated.
“If humankind could somehow perceive this connection to materials, to our collective consumption and the earth it impoverishes, it would be a leap in our social evolution, in building an awareness that we must somehow become better stewards of our future.” states the Studio.
