„The Post-Luxury-Consumer” by Chris Kippenberger

Was bedeutet heute noch Luxus? Chris Kippenberger – Petrol-Head, Künstler, King of Car-Porn – hat sich für sein Video und der dazugehörigen Publikation „How a Rolls-Royce Fucks with Your Brain” eine Überdosis des automobilen Luxus-Overlord gegeben.

Das über mehrere Jahre entstandene Projekt, ist eine textliche und visuelle Auseinandersetzung mit den zeitgenössischen Repräsentationsformen von Macht und Überfluß. Das Video und die wie ein Fanzine gestaltete Collage von polarisierenden Texten und Bildern kommentieren den aufgeregten Ästhetizismus der Luxusindustrie, ihre inhaltsleere Suche nach Superlativen, während sich der Konsument nach Einfachheit sehnt und sich auf die wirklich essentiellen Dinge konzentrieren möchte:

 

The Post-Luxury-Consumer

 

„You are a Consumer who knows that “luxury” is nothing but a marketing ploy. An empty adjective shoehorned into slogans with hopes of making the unpalatable marginally more attractive. A filler word, devoid of definition, that may have once carried weight but no longer does. Overuse, oversaturation, and misattribution have catalyzed semantic satiation, beating those six letters to a verbal pulp. You know that this isn’t the buzzword that people think it is. You can look past it and see things for what they really are. You are acutely aware that more is rarely more. You think for yourself, come to your own conclusions, create your own reality, and don’t rely on hearsay. You are a Post-Luxury Consumer. You are a Consumer of means, and a Consumer with no need to prove it. Part pragmatism, part humility. Success, contrary to popular belief, does not need to be demonstrative, and independence does not need to be outward-facing.

Excess is not luxury. Excess is not luxury. Excess is not luxury.

Subtlety is the new opulence, and not feeling the compulsion to announce who you are – through possessions, through presentation, through posturing – is identification enough. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Yes. It does. You are a Consumer who sees past the aspirational, three-degrees-removed, outside-looking-in view of prosperity. The vaguely extravagant, semi-grand constructed gestures that the cultural narrative tells you constitute sumptuousness. The silk, the strewn rose petals, the coupled champagne flutes, overindulgence as far as the eye can see.”

Text aus: How A Rolls-Royce Fucks with Your Brain, Volume 1: “The Post-Luxury Consumer.” by Chris Kippenberger

Video: Studio Kippenberger

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