Madison Shi

Capstone Project: Planned Obsolescence

Planned obsolescence emerged as an economic model in the early-mid 20th century, when automobile manufacturers began artificially shortening the life cycles of their products in order to maximize profit. This model of production is now virtually ubiquitous in all industries, although it runs particularly rampant in oligopolies and functional monopolies. Sometimes carried out through arbitrary hardware updates, other times through changes in the regime of style, the goal of planned obsolescence is always the same: push consumers to purchase and purchase again, to replace instead of repair.

I want to think about how this model can be extrapolated to the political. As liberatory and minoritarian movements are increasingly taken under the fold, our instinct is to build something that returns to the mechanism of repair, that will preserve the practices we cherish and shield them from being co-opted and ultimately rendered obsolete. But relying on institutions, or even erecting institutions, to do this protective work feels like a doomed approach. What if we abandoned the goal of longevity for something else altogether? What does it mean to build something that isn't meant to last?

Bio

Madison Shi is a senior in the Performance Studies department, double majoring in Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences. They are interested in pursuing law school after graduation, with a particular focus on public interest and constitutional law. Madison currently works for the RISE Lab @ NYU as a research assistant on the SAFE Spaces project, which aims to improve the mental health of young people in the juvenile justice system. In their free time, Madison feels most fulfilled when they can connect to their community in tangible ways. This has led them to join local organizations that provide direct support to vulnerable community members (such as asylum seekers and those experiencing housing insecurity), but it also means simply slowing down and getting to know the people around them! They also love to hide away in the little pockets of wildlife that are tucked around the city, and have recently taken up bird-watching as an excuse to do so more often. Their favorite city bird is the European starling - if you want to spot one, look for a stocky iridescent bird, a bit smaller than a pigeon, with bluish, greenish, and purplish plumage!

Q&A with Madison

What inspired your project?
Much of my education in the department has centered around how to do things - with words, aesthetics, gesture, the body, etc. - and more often than not, a key takeaway from those lessons are that how we choose to do things is never divorced from the political. As I've gotten closer to stepping foot outside the university, into the "real world", the question of how to do what I want (and what I must) has only become more complicated. This project was inspired by a conversation with one of my professors who gave me some advice when I found myself troubled with just that, working in the sphere of criminal justice reform while striving towards abolition, all at once. Although the project does not contend explicitly with the world of criminal justice or policy reform, it is an extension of that conversation. An attempt to figure out how we do it.

Any advice for new Performance Studies students?
Diversify your repertoire. Do things outside the department, things that feel and work in completely different ways. It's in those spaces that you'll figure out how Performance Studies can work for you.