Surrogate: An Economy

As our experience is colonised by a culture of retail, we are forced to evolve into ever more discerning consumers. Everything is experienced in a subtle relationship to other extremely similar objects. A delicate play of similarity and difference structures the equally rarefied economies for the appreciation of paintings, antique furniture, as well as lipsticks and training shoes.

Anything can be singular, yet simultaneously bedded down into a seamless flow of precedents and antecedents. To be singular is the longing which haunts every artifact, hence the endless loop of 'original recipe', 'limited edition' and 'only surviving' as contemporary objects struggle to imaginatively reconstruct their, and our lost origins. The presence of the singular -even as an idea- authorises the joy of self possession implicit in every act of ownership.

In every substitution -object for object, object to subject or object for sign- and whatever the category of exchange - extracting a profit, repaying a debt, giving a gift or receiving an inheritance- is the extrusion of value. Objects are always tokens for something else. Through endless replacement, infinite substitution, and constant translation, values -values of all kinds- assume a form; and it's these object-forms which allow differences in value to be experienced.

In association with Jason Pidd

mpg4 version coming soon..........