“Evening, December 5, 2023. The Christmas season is approaching in the city of Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. While enjoying some alone time outdoors, seeking inspiration in writing, and sipping on a cup of coffee. Starbucks here has been quieter than usual for the past few months, perhaps due to road repairs in front of the store or because of calls to boycott businesses by some groups supporting Palestine. But who knows, I don’t really understand. This coffee shop is usually bustling, but I’m not discussing that issue.
What I want to discuss is contemporary culture, image, and consumerism. This thought occurred to me suddenly because of the question: why do I feel so comfortable working and having coffee at Starbucks, even though I’m not someone addicted to or particularly enjoy coffee? Even though I’ve tried several local coffee shops that are popping up in the city, in the end, I will return to sit, have coffee, and work at Starbucks. Is this part of the image successfully created by Starbucks targeting its market?
Then I remembered one contemporary philosopher, yes, Jean Baudrillard. This French philosopher often observes the behavior of contemporary society, especially as we enter the rapidly advancing digital era. In his book “Simulacra and Simulation,” Baudrillard states that simulacra (as symbols or signs) have replaced reality. Images have a reality that is more real than actual reality. In the context of coffee, we can’t detach ourselves from the fact that Starbucks coffee has a perceived class reality compared to roadside coffee (brewed casually and without a branded package), even though in reality there is no difference, they are both just coffee.
Certainly, this imagery has existed long before the digital era. However, in the digital era, this impression becomes sharper with the existence of social media. What is seen on social media can deceive and not correspond to what is behind it. Hence, people strive to chase a lifestyle that suits their social class.
According to Baudrillard, in this era, individuals who do not play certain roles can pretend to be what they want instantly by wearing or consuming what the group they want to imitate wears or consumes. Because many aspects of reality are replaced by these images, we lose reference points to actual or true reality. Therefore, we are easily swayed by issues or hoaxes presented through simulations.
Baudrillard also explains that in the end, humans will be confined by visuals, billboards, advertisements called visual trash. This greatly affects our subjectivity as social beings, making us automatically become objects, influencing what we choose and what we consume. Baudrillard also talks about the role of media as creators of symbols and the imagery of this false reality. No wonder those who hold media roles today can control a large audience, so this hyperreality is also related to control, power, and power relations.
Simulations can change what is real. For example, during COVID, I remember there was an issue stating that some products would be stormed and become scarce, such as masks. So people started rushing to supermarkets to hoard masks, causing mask prices to skyrocket and become scarce. This proves that issues and simulations can influence reality.
In the entertainment and gaming industry, we are often presented with a film that is made and impressed as more real than existing reality. So we believe that it will happen, creating a pseudo-consciousness. In the gaming industry, with the advent of VR and AR technologies combined with AI, the dream of a metaverse could be the most accurate example of hyperreality as described by Baudrillard.
However, there are signs of dystopia conveyed by Baudrillard regarding the emergence and existence of this Hyperreality when we are bombarded by excessive communication and information from the media. It seems we lose privacy and public space, where people compete to share their privacy on social media. So it’s not too difficult to read someone’s character or personality through their social media. There are no more boundaries. According to him, this marks the end of humanity as social beings.
By building awareness that the imagery of reality created by the media, we become more selective and critical, even more self-aware in questioning the reality and truth presented in front of us, even in making decisions.
In relation to this, I then reflect and project personally on my recent works. I draw undefined objects, deliberately distancing myself from intentional visual references, sometimes being spontaneous imagery. Objects that I define as marginalized and distorted, as objects that I consider not too beautiful in a “normal” sense but given a touch of contrasting colors and polished with aesthetic techniques and theories. It’s as if I want to depict a distorted reality that exists today, beautifully polishing what is actually a paradoxical reality, an image, but in the broader sense, I am depicting a large framework of the reality that exists, namely Hyperreality itself.”
By Hans Kristo | Artwork by Hans Kristo | Medan, 2023