The Pursuit of Happiness
“I’m on the pursuit of happiness and I know everything that shine ain’t always gonna be gold.” (Kid Cudi)
The quest for utopia is the basis of progression. As human beings in general, we are always after the next thing that is going to make us a better, more complete person. In modern society, a lot of the work is done by objects – a new smart phone packed with amazing applications is probably the example of the moment.
When conceiving this piece, I was thinking about the existence of the somewhat flexible systems in our daily lives that keep us all in check – stereotypes, social constructs, et cetera. This led me to think about the first incarnation of the American suburb directly after the Second World War, the birthplace of the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses”, and what sort of space that was initally created to be and do versus how we view the same space now. It was supposed to be a haven and a thank you gift of sorts for the returning G.I.s and their new families, but in the 60 years that followed, the effects of this so-called utopia have influenced almost everything we do as a society, in a lot of ways not for better. In a way, for me, the suburbs of that time period (and the newer developments of the New Urbanist manifesto of recent years) are a perfect representation of everything I want to explore in my work – multiple levels of façade and simulacra, the never-ending quest for utopia and its subsequent failure on an epic scale, pattern and repetition, as well as it being the cradle for everything that I hold dear in contemporary popular culture.