WAYNE MADSEN - Big Box Economy

Overview

I heard a report on NPR about the effects, both positive and negative of Big Box stores such as Wal-Mart and Target entering a community. While I am ambivalent about the effects of Big Box corporations, it tends to be a topic many people become hostile over, yet it surrounds us in America because we all use it.

I am much more interested in our investment in the device that strengthens Big Box corporations: economics and consumption. We consume a great deal, without considering the magnitude of our consumer nature. I wanted to find a way to depict the social connections to consumerism: what is it we actually do when we consume?

These are images from a show at the Provo Arts Center in Provo, Utah. I collaborated with two other artists in producing these two temporary sculptures. The installation took two days after months of planning. Special thanks to all who contributed their receipts.

The American currency system has developed a new feature of the western market – Big-Box corporate stores. A big-box corporate store is the mega-market store, where the corporation supplies thousands of different brands of goods underneath one single roof, usually in the form of an enormous warehouse. These mega-stores dot the American landscape, often more recognizable and familiar than a local store or a regional chain. More often than not, the term Big-Box directly correlates with the concept of a chain of stores, linked together, marketing to sizable groups and mass populations unheard of before.

As citizens of this nation, we participate in Big-Box living. We grow up knowing specific store brands much better than others. We can spot them and wherever we go, we know we won’t be far away from one of those trustworthy locations: trustworthy in what we’ll find inside them.

We used three objects that address different aspects of Big Box economics. The candle and flowers represent individuals and the receipts represent our individual experience. In a western economy, we make exchanges in currency. These receipts mark our experience within this currency economy. As artists, we have spent the past months saving these receipts and asking others to participate in collecting receipts of their purchases. Many of these purchases are necessity based: food stuffs, travel allotments and occasional “pleasure” transactions. But each of us has become wiser in knowing what our lives are like in Big-Box corporate America.

We invite you to participate and add your experience to our show.