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world, you may find that most of it is plastered with visuals promoting one shampoo or another. Many of the residents of this world have become so submerged in these visuals that they have receded from the fore-conscious – like a poster on a bedroom wall that has been rendered invisible by time. The same attribute that allows these common visuals to disappear also allows most piles to speed by our conscious perception. This attribute is stasis.
Staring at the forest floor you ignore 99% of your potential visual field and focus in on a rustling bush that may hide potential predator or prey. In short, if it doesn't move, we don't see it. The vast piles of waste and excess that have been generated by capitalism in the past two-hundred years have largely gone unnoticed. It will take the migration of these piles for the majority to realize they are drowning in them. A stagnating pile is like the forest floor. Eventually it will move on its own recourse, but the pace of natural movement is so slow that all the whizzing and buzzing that surrounds the pile ensures its invisibility. There is a concept hiding in someone's attic known as figure and ground. The modern world is obsessed with the figure and has neglected its ground – its environment. Primitive man didn't have Entertainment Tonight to sharpen his focus upon figures. Instead, he lived in a more complete harmony with his environment. The pile is the ignored environment in a universe of never-ending figure production. Capitalism's primary staying power is predicated upon its ability to continually manufacture new figures |
to focus attention away from the environment that it is corrupting. We use the word environment in this case not as synonym for the biological-natural world, but for the total construction we are immersed within. In the equation of the figure and the ground, the ground cannot be annihilated. It can be ignored, but the figure cannot exist without its environment. Figure and ground are involved in a dynamic relationship. Both figure and ground exert a constant pressure on each other across the perceived void that separates them. This relationship is not stagnant. The constant pressure creates a condition of continual potential transformation.
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