Hyper-Consumerism and Abstract Landscape in Asia

Abstract

This project examines the politics of abstract desire, hyper-consumerism, and the notion of fantasy in the Asian and Chinese fashion industries. The fascination for logos is often rooted in nostalgia and is an important part of the visual landscape in popular culture. However, China’s replicas have been labeled as “imitations” or “knock-offs” by Western society. This paper focuses on abstracting the notion of hyper-consumerism and interrogating the relationship between visual advertisement, its materiality, and its representation in the global marketplace. How does advertising contribute to the production of consumer goods? Can we create a cyclical vision for new materials? How is the value of luxury created, displaced, transformed, and consumed via physical space? This project confronts the relevance of luxury and its banalization by proposing new relationships to consumption and examines the visual language of logos and their representation in society.