The Gospel of the Enlightened Consumer

The Gospel of the Enlightened Consumer from Teemu Takatalo on Vimeo.

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In the last months we have met many interesting artists, actors, cultural producers, collectives​ and more. We have also participated in discussions with academics from Germany and the United Kingdom and most of the conversations have been centred around social impacts of art, economic impacts on art and ways of organising and producing. Whilst these aspects are extremely interesting, we noticed at some point that the focus on art itself was not so prominent. 

Therefore we are posting a piece of art, produced by Teemu takatalo of the project, and relevant in a sense due to the recent discussions about censorship in Greece, but also in other parts of Europe. And also relevant because of the topics in the film itself. 

Teemu's blog is: http://www.yleisradio.net
For more videos by Teemu, please visit: 
​https://vimeo.com/teemutakatalo

​A description of the film can be found below:

In September 2011 Teemu Takatalo's consumer critical mural The Absolution of the Enlightened Consumer was censored and destroyed in a gallery, in Tampere, Finland by the producers of the exhibition. The painting consisted of painted company logos of nine business enterprises, having their shops in the same shopping mall with the gallery, and texts about negligence of their social and environmental responsibility programs.

The brutal act against critical but harmless painting evoke few questions: why on the whole is business life trying to convinced us by its' virtue? If and the destructive character of the capitalistic economy is a generally accepted fact, why does someone who admits this still kneels and stoops in front of the altars of capitalism?

​By analyzing this Takatalo figured out a wider conceptual error that exists in consumption and capitalistic production: the both are structured in a way that reminds remarkably a concept of the Christian theology, even though capitalism and the western culture are nowadays primary understood as secular.

Read the full description by clicking HERE