Watch the Gap: The Shock of Application and Wolves in Sheep's Clothing Main Menu

Bernays Sauce

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Consumption is the product of another kind of gap. A gap in between theory and practice, in particular Freud's theories and the practice of public relations as conceptualized by his nephew Edward Bernays. Freud’s theories of the unconscious were consciously applied to what Bernays called the “engineering of consent” (Happiness Machines, see 00:028:00) that would change the course of history: everything from American mass culture, to neo-liberal concepts of democracy, to curating can be traced back to Bernays and his application of psychological theory to the “establishment,” be that in politics, big business or in the culture industry. Bernays’ techniques of mass persuasion are still as pervasive today as they were in the 1920s, if not even more sinister in the ways in which these techniques have not only engineered consent but orchestrated the conditions of control—techniques further coopted by politicians, the CIA, and public relations firms. The drive to consume and commodify everything from products to images to lifestyles is a strategy of desire (Engineering of Consent, see 00:24:53) that has its roots in the gap between intention and realization.

On a side note, Curationsism, a term coined Toronto writer and art critic David Balzer, is “the acceleration of the curatorial impulse to become a dominant way of thinking and being.” (Balzer 8) In his book by the same name, he explores “curation’s close alliance with capitalism and its cultures.” (9) He asks in the book, “[H]ow much curatorial work did you do today? (116) acknowledging the implications of the century of the self as we transition into the century of the selfie. Indeed, we have become the “arbiters of our own taste” (Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering, see 00:00:22) but never as a condition of freedom, but as a recuperation: now the commodity of our own cognition.

Works Cited
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