control

This collage distills a key part of the pop formula: in the age of mechanical (and now digital) reproduction, art is not just made to be felt—it is made to be consumed. As Walter Benjamin argues, the reproducibility of art strips it of its “aura”—its original, unique presence in time and space. In its place, we get images, sounds, and personalities manufactured for distribution and replication. GURL’s art, like most mainstream pop, exists not only to express, but to circulate, to sell, to chart. In the collage, a chain leads directly to a barcode—a blunt symbol of the commodification of creative output. Barcodes are scanned. They are owned. And now, so is music.

The white footprints moving from the star to the calendar allude to the formulaic march toward fame, where art becomes something scheduled, strategized, and optimized for release. The eye looming overhead—the eye of mass culture—reminds us of the forces that surveil and shape this process. Informed by thinkers like Adorno, mass culture can be understood as a top-down system where entertainment is standardized, prepackaged, and predictable. It creates the illusion of choice while offering nearly identical products. To participate in this world as a pop star means knowing how the system works—and how to make yourself into something worth scanning.