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The Convenience Store at the End of the World

October 24, 2018 by Museum Fatigue

If it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, then the post-apocalyptic grocery store is there to help imagine both. Catastrophically emptied of employees with shelves left stocked waiting to be raided by roving bands of survivors—it is common to the mise en scène of the end-of-the-world film genre as a sign of the collapse of the economic relations that define our current globalized-capitalist-market-economic system. Products in the store-at-the-end-of-the-world are left unguarded and free […]

Categories: Consumption, End of Times, Retail • Tags: consumption, post-apocalyptic, smart store, surveillance, the eerie

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Demolishing the 2010 Shanghai Expo Saudi Pavilion

June 29, 2017 by Museum Fatigue

The other day while bicycling past the site of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, I happened upon the destruction of one of its most famous destinations—the Saudi Arabia pavilion. It was already in such a state of advanced demolition that at first I didn’t even recognize what it was. The frazzled, suicidal palm trees standing like jumpers on the edge of the rooftop three stories up were what initially caught my eye. I didn’t have time to stop for more than […]

Categories: China, End of Times, Ruins • Tags: Expo 2010, Saudi Pavilion, Shanghai

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Gold, DVDs, Surveillance Cameras and Meat: Supplies for the End Times

August 7, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: End of Times, Surveillance • Tags: apocalypse, cameras, DVD, food, gold

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“Sing Red to Fight Darkness”: Chinese Urban Development as Apocalypse

July 23, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“Yes, people are constructed by their material world, but often they are not themselves the agents behind that material world through which they must live” (Miller 2009: 84). “The apocalyptic describes not just the spilling forth of the unseen, but also of the undifferentiated matter of the possible, of what could have been and was not, of what neither came to be nor what went away” (Williams 2011: 6). While in Dalian last month I found myself with a free […]

Categories: China, End of Times, Material Culture, Mythologies, Photo Essays, State of Emergency, Urban • Tags: apocalypse, Chinese Communist Party, corruption, 红色年代, Dalian, Daniel Miller, Evan Calder Williams, 钉子户, homes, Mao Zedong, nail houses, neighborhood, Omega Man, security, slogans, surveillance, tea, urban planning, 口号, 拆, 人情味

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Apptivity™ Seat for iPad® for TouchToddlers™ and iChildren®

December 10, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Remember the round fleshy people stuffed into chairs with sippy cups and video screens hovering just inches from their faces in Pixar’s 2008 film Wall-E? I had always assumed they were intended as critical commentary on an over-mediated consumer society, not as an actual product concept. Evidently the designers over at Fisher-Price either didn’t see the film, or didn’t get the satire. There is no other explanation for the creation of The Newborn-to-Toddler Apptivity™ Seat for iPad® device—the unholy merging of a child […]

Categories: Bodies, Childhood, Consumption, End of Times, iPad • Tags: Aldous Huxley, Apptivity™ Seat, Betas, Brain Plasticity, Brave New World, Fisher-Price, iPad, iPotty, Science Fiction, Wall-E

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Mystery Object #13: Everyday Face Mask

October 31, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

The air pollution in Beijing regularly approaches apocalyptic levels many times those considered healthy by the WHO. The other day a cloud of smog so huge that it could be seen from space, blanketed the entire area. With the PM 2.5 count pushing 500, it was shocking to observe sunset conditions in the middle of the afternoon. Even the extraordinary, however, can become normalized and marketized. Case in point, the 7-11 around the corner from my hotel had a whole […]

Categories: End of Times, Environment, Everyday Things, Mystery Objects • Tags: 7-11, Beijing, face mask, pollution, smog

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Beijing Sunset

October 30, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Thanks to high levels of pollution in the air, today Beijing “enjoyed” a sunset that lasted much of the afternoon. Driving home sometime around 4pm, making our way through the clogged streets in the thick pollution, I couldn’t help imagine that I wasn’t in the present but in a not too distant post-apocalyptic future of environmental devastation. Then again, who said apocalypses have to arrive suddenly? Maybe they can creep up slowly like a car in Beijing traffic.

Categories: China, End of Times, Environment, Surveillance, Urban • Tags: automobiles, Beijing, cctv, pollution, smog, sunset

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Detroit and the Aral Sea

September 19, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

[I was going through some old drafts of posts-never-completed this morning and decided to delete the ones I’ll likely never complete. Others, like this one are parts of ideas or beginnings of drafts that never got finished but don’t deserve to be deleted because there is something there worth keeping. So I’ve decided to just post them as-is.] A few weeks ago when we visited Detroit, all I could think about was the Aral Sea. Why would a visit to […]

Categories: End of Times, Environment, Essays, Representation • Tags: Aral Sea, Detroit, disaster

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Protection in the Nuclear Age

September 7, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

“In this uneasy age in which we live, strife abounds in many troubled parts of the world. The weapons of modern warfare have become increasingly powerful and numerous…In the face of this threat, a strong civil defense is needed not only throughout government, but on the part of the individual and the family.” In the final throes of preparing for this semester, while digging though some readings for a class, I came across a small booklet that I collected a […]

Categories: Books, End of Times, Gear, Memory, Mystery Objects, Retro • Tags: Civil Defense, civil preparedness, Department of Defense, fallout shelter, Fallout Shelter Design, Nuclear Age, Nuclear Attack, Survival

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Post-Apocalyptic Déjà Vu in Gary, Indiana

July 22, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

During our drive through Gary, Indiana we pulled over in front of the dilapidated and boarded up remains of what had once been a supermarket. Standing in the fractured, concrete-and-weed parking lot, facing the building, with its faded paint and busted-out window frames, the strongest sense of déjà vu hit me. I had been there before. I knew what the inside of the store looked like with its dark rows of rusted, toppled shelves and trash-covered floors. When I was thirsty, hadn’t […]

Categories: End of Times, Games, Memory, Urban, Zombie • Tags: deja vu, Fallout 3, Gary Indiana, post-apocalyptic, post-industrial, rust belt, Super-Duper Mart

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