Karine Giboulo: A Bittersweet Symphony

I stare into my closet as The Verve, Bittersweet Symphony, plays on the CD alarm clock radio gifted to me by the mother of my highschool sweetheart. I remember the lyrics sounding out like gospel as shame washed over me. Clothing, shoes, bags stare back daring me to make my life about them. I remember thinking, this is life, “Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die.” Sickness fills my stomach feeling annoyingly called out by The Verve. For the first time I ponder the true and honest point of my life. Am I to define it with the items in my possession? More, nicer, newer, bigger, to be American is to consume. “I am here in my mold” born to purchase. Karine Giboulo’s documentary style installations illustrate the inconvenient truths of what she calls hyper consumerism we live with everyday. Like a sickness with a hold on us that we may never recover from where we must commodify literally everything, I take bets on at which point big business bottles the air itself and sells it to us only to realize O2 bars already exist. After all, when all you wield is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Human progress seems devolved to a form of excessive trade which dwarfs all other notions of progress. Education commodified, health commodified, faith commodified, literally mind, body and soul commodified. Karine blows the whistle with elaborate dioramas playing out this symphony and challenging us to consider the absurdity of a community that asks us to contribute nothing more than dollars. I ask at which point we grow bored and tired of this future and consider the notion that spending power is anything but, and the “Bittersweet Symphony” of trading time for money becomes a pitiful excuse for a life. Could we abandon visions of building our own personal kingdoms and find contentment in smallness so that an alternate form of happiness can thrive? Want less, work less, and therefore live bitterless.

Karine Giboulo: HYPERLand (2014) - detail