Anti-consumption
Jonas Staal

Stop consuming and you will be paid by the hour. Decide yourself how long you can keep up this state of 'anti-consumption'.



Visual artist Jonas Staal is offering to pay you to stop consuming, by placing your body in temporary sleep mode; a state of being in which as many outside impulses as possible are warded off. You will be paid by the hour and can decide yourself how long you wish to keep up this state of anti-consumption. Throughout the period of the intervention, Staal will be continuously present to document the intervention and note its duration.
The point of departure of the work is Staal's conviction that in essence, art deals with a form of anti-consumption; a moment in which one renounces the world and the overwhelming number of imposed meanings attributed to it. In contrast to earlier work, Staal has not chosen to first make a sculpture to bring this shift in awareness into being, but directly addresses the observer, who in this case also immediately becomes the 'object' of the work. In the work Anti-Consumption, money is seen as the communal 'language' of the West. Staal realises the shift in consciousness that he envisages by using the Western system against itself as it were. A moment of anti-consumption can only be realised by means of the language that essentially makes consumption possible. 

Data:
Friday 6 july
Saturday 7 july
Sunday 8 july

Lokation:
the shopping-area

Foto: Jonas Staal



Foto: Jonas Staal