Mueseum Of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC)

Imagine as you next walk down the high street or relax in your local park, that everything is known about you – your name, your favourite cafe, your last purchase, your most personal feelings, and even your religious beliefs. Does a warm feeling of belonging grow within you, or does this invasive surveillance freak you out? With retail driving the development of real-time big data processes, how and what we trade, exchange and consume and where we do it, is affecting both the worlds we live in, and those we dream of making – in ways that seem increasingly far beyond our knowledge or control.

Museum of Contemporary Commodities (MoCC) is a digitally networked arts project that invites us to collectively re-value our commodity cultures, by treating the things we buy today as the heritage of tomorrow. In May 2016 MoCC is presenting a series of lively, and entertaining digital hacktivist activities and associated events in Exeter and online, that explore the deep links between data, trade, place and values that shape our everyday lives.

The Museum of Contemporary Commodities is neither a building nor a permanent collection of stuff – it’s an invitation. To consider every shop, online store and warehouse full of stuff as if it were a museum, and all the things in it part of our future heritage. Imagine yourself as this museum’s curator with the power to choose what is displayed and how. To trace and interpret the provenance and value of these things and how they arrived here. To consider the effects this stuff has on people and places close by or far away, and how and why it connects them. What do we mean by things or stuff? Everything that you can buy in today’s society. The full range of contemporary commodities available to consume.