Material Economies

Material economies from Michael Richardson on Vimeo.

We spent last week creating short videos, visual windows into the world of our projects. Mine, stemming around the vast canyons of knowledge that are evidently absent from the minds of the consumer, concerned the provenance of consumer goods and food products. This was a small documentary/investigation into the minds of the masses, interrogating how clued up they are about what they buy, all through the medium of film.

As you can hazard to imagine, the origins, production methods, ingredients, transportation modes were all factors vacant in the minds of most with but a few boasting knowledge of various products 'organic' and 'fair trade' credentials. One of the recurrent responses though it is worth noting, is that a fair percentage of those queried within the process seemed to think that Sainsburys, or the 'brand' itself were the organisations that manufactured the items/products, Since when did Sainsbury's ever produce any of its consumables from scratch instore?

Embarrassment

I'd say safely say a large percentage of those asked throughout the process were marginally-deeply embarrassed about their lack of basic knowledge concerning the everyday items they consume, it can be construed that which forms the everyday has marginal value, food: it's ok, it's cheap enough, we can just bin it and buy more tomorrow.

One last point, food, as well as other consumables origins are rarely scrutinised, but as interest has slowly taken a hold tv has begun to shower us with a plethora of documentaries and series regarding these very issues, provenance. Regardless to say, this detachment from production and material origins within society is nothing short of amazing.