Annotated text No.4 Raisa Watkiss

Jean Baudrillard The System of Objects 1996 Translated by James Benedict

Baudrillard is not focusing upon the object in a fine art capacity, but on the architectural, design of things, extensively things which occupy our home and lives of the seemingly mundane variety. Having said that if you are interested in philosophical and theoretical debates on the role of objects there expansive nature and language and include the fetishization and perceived agency of object/thing/non-thing then this compendium or criteria of classification would be of interest. Baudrillard begins with the comparison in the growth of objects and could they be classified as we do flora and forna, species, subspecies and evolutionary types. This was an interesting thought, one which I had not considered, but again examining publications on the history of art does this not achieve this by attaching objects to a period/movement we can generally have an affinity with (realism/cubism/surrealism)

The study of this ‘spoken’ system of objects -that is, the study of the more or less consistent system of meaning that objects institute-always presupposes a plane distinct from this ‘spoken’ system, a more strictly structured plane, a structural plane transcending even the functional account of objects. This plane is a technological one.

The narrative explores the consumption, production and linguistic phenomena that is the object whether it be the combustion engine, the fins of a propellor or household appliances. They are all objects of consumption, collection, activity, fashion. How do the assembly line mirror the contemporary diagnosis and the artist interaction with practice, the subject viewer’s equal interpretation of language/desire and textual nuances?

Baudrillard considers ‘objects formal and technical connotations are added to a functional incoherence, it is the whole system of needs socializes unconscious, cultural or practical in short, a whole inessential system, directly experienced – which surges back on to essential technical order and threatens the objective status of the object itself'. This publication is not one which ordinarily I would have sought out but one which having read a sizable proportion of has allowed my understanding of the wider conversation of the object beyond the contemporary and exposed my thinking to objecthood as awhole. In one of my previous annotated texts, these ideas have been explored in less detail by the authours whereas Baudrillard has provided the reader with an expert diagnosis of production and consumption of the object both theoretically and socially as a culture.

Pages 140-145 were of particular interest, concerning Vance Packard, the waste makers (New York: David Mckay,1960),p.55 whereby the consumption and evolution of object/thing are divided into three sub-categories Obsolence of function, Obsolence of quality and obsolescence of desirability. Concerns the vagaries of fashion by rendering objects more shoddy and ephemeral and how objects can be made obsolescent.

By far the most comprehensive manuscript I have read this module and one which I will consider further in my object/thing thinking.