More specifically I guess he’s protesting the socio-economic class divisions that he believes will be widened with increased automation and rapid manufacturing. And of course the best way to draw attention to those divisions is by selling overpriced chocolate in ironic shapes to the very people responsible for it.
Saso Sedlacek is an artist that has previously explored class and economic disparity, and his latest art project called Dolce Far Niente is no exception. Dolce Far Niente means ‘delicious idleness’, an appropriate name given his medium and subject matter. Consisting of handmade chocolates shaped like victims of technological advancement and oppressive capitalism, you can choose between a beggar, a protesting 99%er, a busker with an accordion, a prostitute or a woman who ostensibly hanged herself. I can only assume that she did so because she’s been made part of such a convoluted art project.
Sedlacek explains “The consequences of the economic crisis are shaking up the illusion of the wealthy West and changing the iconography of everyday European life – something which, until recently, we in the Western world have taken for granted. The images of poverty, despair, protests, people under pressure … are scenes that are not at all new. What is new is both their frequency and their proximity.“
Sedlacek also produced two accompanying videos:
In order to make the chocolates they were first 3D printed in gypsum and then had silicon molds made from them. Chocolate is then poured into the molds in a Brooklyn confectionery, packaged and shipped in a nifty custom box. Sedlacek laments his inability to 3D print the chocolates themselves as the technology is still far too new and expensive. However he does plan to upgrade his project in the future once the technology becomes more attainable. Using 3D printing to create these handmade chocolates was not a matter of convenience but rather an intentional choice on the artist’s part.
“3D modelling and 3D printing… symbolically shows the potential pitfalls of technological development that, while promoting many positive innovations, within the new regime of economic commodity exchange, merely hides the danger of unemployment for an entire class of people.”
I do think the art project is clever and I agree with the artist’s general message, that we over consume to the detriment of the rest of the world not privileged to be from the West and that it is starting to catch up to us. But I find the condemnation of technology to be, frankly, a little intellectually lazy. As evidenced by his own use of it, technology can be a tool used to oppress, but it can also be a tool co opted by the oppressed and used against those who seek to maintain economic and social disparities beneficial to them. The real problem has always been and always will be one of class. While Sedlacek happily points his satire in that general direction, he seems to aim it at the wrong target.
The roots of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and every other ism that you can think of, is the product of a seemingly untouchable upper class steeped in a heady brew of toxic privilege. Not to mention the willingness to wield that privilege as a scythe, mowing down the less fortunate as if they were merely crops to be exploited. That attitude trickles down and infects those of us that desperately wish to join the ranks of the 1%, allowing the cycle of exploitation and disenfranchisement to continue. I think the message of the artist’s statement is greatly diminished by shifting the blame to tools rather than the people who exploit them. After all, the tools are not created by the super rich, they are simply taken and used against those of us, the hoi polloi, who do the actual work of technological innovation.
You can see more of Sedlacek’s art on his website, and if you really want one, the chocolates can be purchased here for twenty Euros each. Which is a lot for one piece of chocolate. Even special artisan hipster chocolate from Brooklyn. Is the absurd price a commentary on capitalism and wasteful consumerism? I certainly hope so, because if not, that twenty seven dollar piece of chocolate better read me passages from A People’s History of the United States before I shove it in my mouth.
Source: Vice.
