Erik Hoedemakers –
58 x 34 x 158 cm
Mass manufacturing is just another way of making lots of the same things. Great. Before mass production, people made fewer things. They made things they really needed. Along came mass production and more things that were needed got made. Everyone’s a winner.
But when everything that was needed had been made, the mass producers had to find a way to sell us things we didn’t need. Otherwise they would have been crushed under the pile of things they had made – and we didn’t need.
We wised up and stopped buying things we didn’t need. So the manufacturers made the things we did need, but they made sure that they would break sooner or later, so that we would need to buy new things.
We wised up and complained that things broke too quickly. So the manufacturers made the things we needed, but invented fashion, so that we wouldn’t like them ourselves before too long. No one complains that their thing has gone out of fashion. They hide the shame and buy something new.