Welcome to Short Arts. This is my take on Vimdelvoys Kloecker from 2000 to 2007. The artwork is a machine that literally produces shit. At one end the machine is fed food and it goes through a series of digestion machines moving down a conveyor belt until finally a turd is extruded. It is then vacuum packed and sold. So how do we read this shit heart? Well it could be a comment on the post human body where our most basic functions have been mechanized and rationalized. Or it could just be an obnoxious joke from an objectionable artist. By my shit it's art says Delvoy. But I want to read this artwork through a specific critical theory framework that emerges in the mid 20th century. This work is not about biological shit, it's about cultural shit. Or it used Martial McCloan's term, it's about mass media. So how is Kloecker a critique of mass media? Well let's start with the Kloecker logo. It's clearly a reference to the Ford logo. In parodying the Ford logo Delvoy is connecting the work to the transformation of labor that Henry Ford instigated, namely assembly line production. In assembly line production the product moves along a conveyor belt that never stops, gets faster and faster forcing workers to conform to the speed of the machine. Let's turn to Martin Leferf, who said Ford's gamble with regard to assembly line production was grounded in his belief that mass production would entail mass consumption. In this context consumerism becomes the new target of the cannibalistic metaphor. For Ford and industrial capitalism more generally, success was gabbled entirely on the hope that increasing production would increase consumption. The exploitation of the working classes in these factories was simultaneously the exploitation of their consumption. Workers were now consumers, cannibals who used their money to buy the very goods they were making in factories. But why is this artwork referencing a labor shift that occurred over a hundred years ago? Delvoy is asking what happens when culture and fine art is subject to the same forces of mass production and consumerism? Mass consumption is the accelerator of capitalism. It makes us buy more cars, TVs and toasters. But what does mass cultural production look like? Khloéac are pretty clearly answers that. Mass culture looks, smells and tastes like shit. He argues like many cultural theorists in the 20th century that if you apply factory production to culture, then you remove the very thing that makes culture important. You turn something that is risky, difficult, unique and radical into something that just exists to be consumed and then discarded like junk food. Khloéac is the ultimate image of culture under capitalism. It is cynical, funny and unfortunately it smells right for a world where a reality TV star can become president. Culture is no longer powerful because it challenges us, it is powerful because it consumes us and we consume it. We cannibalize ourselves. Culturally we are eating our own shit. It is easy for a fine artist to attack mass media. It's expected even and ultimately it's not that interesting. But for me, while Khloéac stands out is because while it is an attack on popular culture, it also offends high art. This is not only in the cynical move to sell the shit, to gouge as much money as possible from art collectors. It is the visceral effect of this work that I admire. If you have been in the presence of this artwork, then you will know what I'm talking about. The work is gut wrenchingly disgusting. You can't get close to it without gagging. No matter how good the air filtration system is, you can smell it through the whole gallery. It makes you sick even before you see it. It infects every other artwork. It aggressively forces itself into every corner of the gallery. Khloéac isn't just about itself. It isn't a smug little space where you can reflect on capitalism's corruption of culture and then move on to view some beautiful paintings. It forces you to confront cultural corruption with every turn. It makes you realise that capitalism and art is not simply a theme of contemporary art. It is the organising principle of all culture, bit high art or mass media. It is the ideology of our time that Delvoy is making us gag on.