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Progress shot of poor old Tom Kiat (although I guess he made it out better than the other two)
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People hustling past my posters @ Ashfield station
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Final *poor quality* shot of my posters lying on driveway
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ARTIST STATEMENT
My artwork addresses the topic of “glitches” in the social order. It aims to subvert political advertising by hijacking its visual mechanics and teasing out certain systemic truths which would otherwise arguably lie beyond view. It draws influence from two central sources; the Situationist movement of the 60s and 70s and their contemporary progeny in Adbusters and the UK's Brandalism movement. My practice-led research was largely organic and flowed naturally with the production of my artwork.
I found that my theoretical research was informed by my practice-led research rather than vice versa. As an obsessive hoarder I’d already been collecting, and experimenting with, advertising material related to my upcoming local council elections. In these early experiments, documented on tumblr, I sought to boil down the charming letter I received from mayor-hopeful John Faker down to it’s essential points. I discovered while playing with a scanned copy of the letter in photoshop that any action non-reductive in nature- i.e. adding images or text, altering the core colour scheme or dramatically re-arranging its components diluted the overall effect. If the viewer’s eye could immediately identify that the item at hand had been altered, it had lost its sanctity and took on a new meaning. By making relatively minor changes like blanking out sections the image could still conceivably escape the filter of the viewer’s consciousness and slip through with the 3,500 other marketing messages our subconscious is assailed by on a daily basis (Blake 2014).
These experiments led me to research examples of manipulated advertising, and subsequently the sociological theory which informed them. The Vancouver-based magazine Adbusters has for the last 28 years led the crusade against “advertising’s control over cultural spaces” (Rumbo 2002, p. 12), pioneering a tactic known as ‘culture jamming’ (ibid., p. 14). Culture jamming aims to disrupt the otherwise seamless flow of marketing information which characterises urban spaces, by hijacking logos and slogans and turning them against their original meaning (Joseph & Potter 2004). The Brandalism movement in the UK has carried on the proverbial torch in spectacular fashion, with a number of large scale actions subverting advertising spaces across the country (Blake 2014). In 2014, 365 screen-printed artworks created by 40 different artists were installed in bus stop advertising panels -over the course of 2 days (Oxford Times 2014). In 2015 the same movement flooded the streets of Paris with 600 similarly subversive artworks, mimicking adverts, critiquing government leaders during the UN summit on climate change (BBC 2015). Both of these movements were and are heavily influenced by the Situationist movement of the late 60s and 70s, which coined the technique ‘detournement’ to describe the process of subtly editing an existing work, maintaining its central elements of design, for the purpose of creating an antagonistic meaning (Knabb 2006).
My final artwork can then be conceived as an example of ‘detournement’ concerning political advertising. Politicians readily conflate democracy with “the will of the people”, and the core notion that democracy relies on freedom of choice is rarely contested (Gagnon & Chou 2014). Yet in recent years “a lack of transparency, complex rules and the role of third-party groups” have driven dissent towards democracy, with the most recent Lowy institute poll suggesting that nearly half (48%) of Australians are dissatisfied with our current system (Hutchens 2017). This dissatisfaction has arguably manifested at the local level, where council elections -characterised by one economist as “a corporate exercise”- have enjoyed historically low voter turnout levels (Byrne 2016). In my opinion, local politicians have sought to remedy this malaise with two main visual tactics in their advertising. First, candidates are humanised by featuring their names and faces extremely prominently (almost inevitably at the expense of any space dedicated to outlining said candidate’s policies). Then, each party seeks to distinguish themselves from their crowd of fellow autocratic leeches with distinct colour schemes, logos and slogans.
It’s these two features which I attempted to hijack in my attempt at ‘detournement’.
The original meaning? That these candidates are wholly distinct, warm, Bachelor-binging, shiraz-swigging, rate-paying human entities just like yourself.
My take? That these candidates are merely the peasant corpses, propping up the crumbling mortar of local government’s Great Wall of $55-Apparent-Failure-to-Vote-Fine, indistinguishable but for their handy, ideologically-coded colour schemes. The democracy which they embody is not the democracy of vaunted status or of pure intentions but rather a late-Capitalist reflection of it, a performance of it without real substance, another example of what Debord coined "the society of the spectacle" (1967, p. 6).
First, I obscured the names of the individuals whose posters I’d commandeered and their respective parties, amalgamating them into a general pool of aspiring politicians. Then, I took to their jowls, monobrows and liver spots with a few healthy layers of Bacon-esque skin tone and removed their eyes. I left the colour schemes intact as a memento of their DEEPLY contrasting viewpoints but couldn’t resist the urge to doctor Drury’s rallying slogan of “Making council work for you” to “Making you work”. I then placed these three posters in situ in bustling Ashfield and documented them. Bang!
Upon reflection, at 12:18 on this glorious Friday morning, I did lack conceptual clarity for much of this project’s production. I knew roughly what I wanted to communicate but struggled to articulate these aims concisely. This lack of clarity is reflected in the visual product- in future, I need to concretely hammer out WHAT I want to say before I embark on saying it.
REFERENCES
BBC World 2015, ‘COP 21: Eco-activists Brandalism launch Paris ad takeover’, BBC World, 29 November, viewed 19 September 2017,
Blake, J. 2014, ‘Brandalism’ and ‘Subvertising’: what’s behind the new rebellion against advertising?’, Left Foot Forward, 21 May, viewed 19 September 2017, https://leftfootforward.org/2014/05/brandalism-and-subvertising-whats-behind-the-new-rebellion-against-advertising/>
Debord, G. 1967, The Society of the Spectacle, Buchet-Chastel, Paris.
Gagnon, J.P. & Chou, M. 2014, ‘The ‘will of the people’? It’s the bastardisation of democracy’, The Conversation, 8 September, viewed 20 September 2017, https://theconversation.com/the-will-of-the-people-its-the-bastardisation-of-democracy-29540>
Hutchens, G. 2017, ‘Fears Australia’s political donations system is eroding faith in demoracy’, The Guardian, 7 September, viewed 19 September 2017,
Joseph, H. & Potter, A. 2004, The Rebel Sell, Harper Perennial.
Knabb, K. (trans.) 2006, Situationist International Anthology, Bureau of Public Secrets, London.
Museum of Australian Democracy 2010, Defining democracy, Old Parliament House, viewed 20 May 2017, https://www.moadoph.gov.au/democracy/defining-democracy>
Oxford Times 2014, ‘Spoof bus stop advert attracts police interest’, The Oxford Times, 13 May, viewed 21 May 2017, http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/news/11208006.Spoof_bus_stop_advert_sparks_police_interest/>
Rumbo, J. D. 2002, ‘Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter: The Case of Adbusters’, Psychology and Marketing, vol. 19, no. 4, pp.127–48.
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Example of “brandalism”, movement particularly prominent in UK
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Cover of “Society of the Spectacle” Guy Debord 1967
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Inspo from Constant Nieuwenhuys:
#1 L’Animal Sorcier (1949)
2# Untitled (1975)
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