About The Arcadia Project
The Arcadia Project is a sequence of six projects that together form a phenomenology of attentional economics and American pop culture at the beginning of the 21st century. Transmitted to the public through the medium of advertising, the Arcadia Project seeks to provoke new lines of thinking about the relationship between technology, the media, sex, truth, and the accelerating global economy. It sets forth advertising itself as a new system, a collective game we play to better understand ourselves and our place among one another.
The Arcadia Project is named for Arcas, the son of Zeus and the greatest hunter in all Greek mythology. Arcas nearly died on a burning altar during a feast given by King Lycoan, and he nearly killed his mother while hunting in the woods, having mistaken her for a bear. Zeus saved him both times, and eventually turned him into the Big Dipper. The legend of Arcas hangs over the Arcadia Project as a warning against parasitical rapaciousness. Those who profit from art must do more than hunt and harvest. They must produce as well, and give something back to the culture they feed on.
The Arcadia Project is also a direct reference to Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, a collection of notes and observations that recorded the dawn of mercantile commodity culture in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. One hundred years later, as capitalism makes another huge upshift, the Arcadia Project intends to be a direct continuation of Benjamin's masterpiece.