Commodities and love are relationships, modes of relation, which are also intimately related to one another. In both relationships, an astonishing symbiosis of singularity and universality manifests itself – of the most private privacy and the most public publicness. A commodity, as a usable object of value, always claims to satisfy a concrete need and, at the same time, bears a price as a sign of its universal exchangeability. Love, in a very similar way, professes to be unmistakable and unique every time, and yet inescapably drones on every day on the radio, TV and in film.
This lecture, which you can now listen to on HAU’s Soundcloud channel, was delivered at the University of Darmstadt and provided the starting point for the production “Everybody Needs Only You. Love in Times of Capitalism” (premiere: 6.12.2019 at HAU Hebbel am Ufer), which was originally scheduled to resume in May 2020.
Presented as part of #HAUonline.