Porselli Ballerinas: Authentic, Timeless and Decay, How to Insure the Consumer Will Consume Again

These ballerinas are the result of a collaboration between Collection Privée and Porselli, the equivalent of Italy's France's Repetto. The Italians are a little late on the whole ballerina come-back collaboration thing - an on-going trend spearheaded by Repetto owner (and ex-Reebok VP) Jean-Marc Gaucher. Gaucher is smart and banked right into a now common branding strategy: he stressed Repetto's authenticity (we have been making dance shoes since the 1930s) and gave it edge with exclusive collaborations. In 1999, when Gaucher bought Repetto, the company was near bankruptcy but his séries limitées and exclusive deals with Comme des Garçons, Vanessa Beecroft, Colette, Opening Ceremony or Rodarte have led the company to record 27 million euros in profit in 2008. Not bad in a decade when the rest of the European industry survived by offshoring.

Needless to say not offshoring is in many ways a very good thing. I am also a victim of Gaucher's and Bardot's charm and believe ballerinas (and Mary Janes) to be the next best thing to come out of the 50s for women after de Beauvoir. But the reason for Repetto's survival is part of a current within contemporary consumption patterns that isn't as charming. 

Today's consumers reward products linked to notions of authenticity ("the piece has a history"), quality ("this is a lasting") and timelessness ("the is a classic piece") or at least products with the image of being such. Paradoxically however today's fashion makers find money and fashion buyers find meaning from trends that are as short-lived as possible. The shorter the better - apparently more trends means more sales and more outfits means more identity. While I'm suspect of such logic it's obvious that if Repetto stops producing new collaborations to increase sales and stay hip, the consumer will in all likelihood forget about the timeless qualities of the Repetto and rapidly adorn its feet with Porselli such as these:  a pair that is (illustration) totally banking on its 'timeless' credentials by literally accelerating the time process (aka decaying) the shoes.

Buying new decayed shoes means that if they haven't been replaced by another collaboration resulting in an other authentic timeless and quality pair, the consumer will have no other option but to replace the pair because of its uselessness (read - unwalkable). Brands are so scared (as if they should) that their marketing and trend producing devices wouldn't sellout their next season that they preemptively ruin their creations so that consumers to HAVE to buy new. And shoes aren't the only pieces affected by this trend - the torn tights, the ragged jeans, the bobby-pinned jackets, the see-thru cotton aged t-shirts, and the list goes on.

In present day fashion, time, its value and its look, seem to be a very convoluted dialectic - the look of decay is in because it rings authentic, although authenticity is only a manufactured concept originating in our present, and repairs might be the most timeless activity there is in costume yet it is overrated because our time is directed by an endless appetite for consumption from fear of our future's lack (of money, of identity). 

Time for a new model (and I'm not talking about ending anorexia)?
Brigitte Bardot, originally a dancer, allegedly asked Rose Repetto in 1956 to conceive shoes as light and comfortable as her chausson de dance but sexier. Rose added the heel and voilà the Cendrillon was born:

The Limits of Seeing Ourselves (the Universe)

When I was a kid I remember watching Powers of Ten and thinking it was the coolest thing. Turns out it was produced by Eames duo Charles and Ray (directed by Ray) and released in 1977. As we know, today it's all about interactive usage, and I just discovered a website called The Size of the Universe (if you want to know: 93,000,000,000 light years, but we can only see 14,000,000,000 of it because that's how long the universe has been around for) that, on a similar model as Powers of Ten, interactively enables the user to realize the same two things Powers of Ten makes obvious:

a) we're confused (what's out there?)

b) we're fascinated at our own scale (what are we?)

So did thirty odd years and multiplying our outer space vision by 140 light years really alter something? Maybe not. But it has come up with some really interesting questions.

Before Skateboarding Gets Cool Again, Replacing Fixies and Demonstrating Yet Again How Generic Cool-looking People Are

In New York City cool men have skateboards. Gliding from Williamsburg's bike lanes to Soho's tarmac, New York City skateboarders are not trashy teenagers with a lot of teenage angst, they are cool creative minds wearing Barbour jackets and Yuketen boots. It's a slow but emerging trend and I predict that in five years time skateboards will have replaced fixies. 

Since I have found fixies to be a ridiculous embarrassment to the human race (humans = lambs), before I get just as upset about how trendy skateboards are about to be, here is a touching mini-doc on a young Charity in Afghanistan called Skateistan:

What Does the Man Want? Negotiating Gender in Ads

According to Old Spice, the man wants a girlfriend. According to Argentina's best selling beer, Andes, the man wants a girlfriend. What both brands also agree on is that by their very nature women will only want to be girlfriends if men can comply to a multitude of qualities that men (by their very nature) will never have. 

It's a tough situation. Luckily brands are here to help us negotiate our gender differences and expectations:

Step 1 - to 'get' a girlfriend fool the female olfactory sense into believing you are the perfect man (which translates as simultaneously a motorcycle owner, kitchen maker, beach showerer, cake cooker, forest adventurer, swan diver).
Step 2 - once the girlfriend acquired continue to perpetuate the lie by answering her phone calls in a manufactured audioscape to dupe her into thinking you are unable to see her because of a terrible situation beyond your control (diarrhea, hospital emergency, bar mitzvah, traffic jam, karate class, babysitting).

I think it's a an interesting demonstration of cowardliness and fear of solitude which is rarely reserved to men. In many ways these ads are more representative of human traits ( which applies both men and women) and our high hopes that things might hide these aspects of our kind than gender specifics. Although undeniably prince charming fantasies and men lying to the ones they consider themselves the closest to make for funny (selling) situations.

Demonstration:
June 2010 - Old Spice Deodorant

January 2010 - Andes Beer (Del Campo/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi Buenos Aires)

Could Gucci be Going Metaphysical? Attending a Gucci Marketing Brainstorming Session

I was reading October British Vogue (dedicated to stars, stardust, stardom, astrology and sparks it ironically took ten long pages to describe their cover girl Emma Watson as a laid-back easy-going not-bitchy celebrity normal 20 year old) last night when I discovered this.

This is the Gucci Cruise 2011 Ad Campaign.

As one can see there is a subtle Gucci self-reference: you are looking at a Gucci ad in which another Gucci ad is placed. Both ads have the same two models  (Raquel Zimmermann and Nikola Jovanovic), the same GUCCI white font, the same blue sky, the same weird stares and the (subjective  judgement) poorly acted out 'act as a model' stances.

So is Gucci being witty, critical, ironic? Clearly the slightly clunky Baudrillardian hyper-reality argument whereby reproductions of the real are more real than reality, is well illustrated here. However I'm pretty sure this overwhelmingness of tackiness in a frame was simply the result of big egos, lack of imagination and yet again a simple rehashing of old ideologies and aesthetics. Like the Althussar argument that the capitalist state apparatus ideology hails us into desiring things - the Gucci team must have figured that if they had two 'hailing apparatuses' they could double the chances of doubling their profits. And John Berger's insight that all these advertising images promote better ways of living suggests that the Gucci Cruise 2011 Brainstorming session went something like this:

- Nic: so guys what are we going to do this time? key words - empowerment,  urban vibe, ultraglamorous, military uniforms
- Jennifer: oh my God Raquel is still so empowered, urban and ultraglamorous, we totally need to use her again. But where?
(silent contemplation at Gucci's old ads archived under empowerment, urban vibe, ultraglamorous and military uniforms)
- Jasper: well like John Berger said advertising images create desire like real reality can't. Real reality can't compare to the ads we've been creating for Gucci in other words. So using our own amazing past work as backgrounds would actually be more efficient at convincing people to buy a Gucci bag than real reality...
- Alison: ... oh my god so let's use our own amazing billboards as backgrounds with Raquel so urban and so ultraglam in front!
- Nic: wow, that's totally genius. We're totally amazing guys.

PS note the use was the "Château Marmont" sign at the bottom right corner.

When the MET Gets Insecure - Baldessari's Pure Beauty Take Two

Last week I went to the Metropolitan to see the Baldessari retrospective for a second time (I first saw it at the Tate in London). The Tate had it better. Maybe because the British institution had more room, the MET show felt cluttered. But in their spatial restrictions, I was happy to see the curators presented more of the artist's earlier and less well-known work (such as Baldessari Sings Sol Lewitt of 1972) rather than his 80s color dots on black and white footage. 

In their restrictions, however, they also decided on pretty much the pettiest of possible moves they could have done with Brain/Cloud (With Seascape and Palm Tree) from 2009 -  the image illustrates my post "Baldessari's Brain vs Koons's Penis". This installation is composed of a sculptural brain being filmed by a delayed low quality camera, giving the visitors the chance to see both the brain/cloud in reality and in a mediated reality themselves and the cloud/brain. For some reason - I heard rumors of weight - the MET didn't instal this work but still wanted to. Accordingly they went on presenting multiple flat large-scale reproductions of it as well as its illustration on all of the exhibit's published material.

Talk about being missing the point.

To forget how depressing it is when even the world's top museum is insecure about its collection and/or suggests a reproduction is sort of like the real when doing an exhibit on an artist who has perpetually made fun of such conventional ways of seeing:
Here is a little humor with John Baldessari's Baldessari Sings Sol Lewitt from 1972: 

Ways of Seeing by John Berger (1972) - Authenticity, Images, Advertising, Reproductions and Happiness

I just discovered these 1972 television treasures by John Berger.

Till now I only knew of the end result - the wonderful book "Ways of Seeing." A semi-cult read in cultural/visual studies, in it he rethinks what seeing is - what advertising does, what art means, how reproductions affect the act of seeing and the way which visibility is a subjective process. The originality is that he does this by using images, reproductions and collages as much as words and text. Similarly in the televised version of "Ways of Seeing" he uses editing techniques (as if switching channels) and particular frames (filming the film crew filming him) as much as his voice-over to get his questions across.

Here is a wonderful articulation of the absurd adoration western culture has for authenticity:

In this particular extract Berger looks at (pun intended) ideas of hyperreality and consumption in the world of advertising. At times a little simplistic (forty years have gone giving the issue a bunch of new ways to think about it) but his questions are still just as relevant today as they were 40 years ago:

A Computer Mouse vs. The Stone Axe: Rethinking Gender Division, Ideas having Sex and Understanding Progress

"No one on this planet knows how to make a pencil"

A great TED talk found on metcool:

Commemorating 11/11: Canada's Public Poppy Pins versus France's Private Day Off

In Canada the only thing that flourishes in late-fall are small round red objects on people's suits, blouses and coats. 

They are poppy pins and coming from a country (France) where November 11th is considered a 'jour férié civil' where everything shuts down entirely, there's something strangely awkward about remembering the slaughter of millions for centimeters of mud in the Flanders with a dollar pin. 

On the one hand there's this material red and black felted object cluttering the clothes people wear in public spaces for three good weeks. While loaded with military and nationalistic values, these red dots resonate as things with which to remember and 'commemorate' those dead for the present and consequently a mean to acknowledge and create a collective sense of unity.

And on the other hand there is the 'invisible', and yet just as ritualized and obligatory day off. A whole private twenty-four hours to do anything but the routine. If it is officially a time to reflect about meta-matters of finitude and sacrifice, it isn't lacking it's material manifestations either, such as the flowering of every memorial monument, the presidential speech, televised national ceremony and paper coverage (that, as long as I can remember, always dealt with how many French poilus were still alive- a question that no longer has a numerical answer since le der des der, Lazare Ponticelli, died in March 2008). 

If, in the Canadian case there is an obligatory 'bowing to poppy fascism' and on the other, what Adam Gopnik describes as "the French attitude toward any crisis," to pretend that it isn't happening, both of these rituals are associated to remembrance. If nonchalant dignity of the French and the exposed pride of the Canadian are different ways to remember to remember, to be remembered to remember and more importantly to pretend we can never forget, in the end, if both are actualized through diverging performances, both are animated by the shared and essential fear of forgetfulness, which is so intrinsically human.

More Post ArtFair Thoughts: Mateo Rivano and the Nature of Art

Mateo Rivano's agYU installation at Art Toronto

Since Art Toronto isn't a massive multi-fair enterprise it offers something Miami's forthcoming late november and early december events - including but not limited to SCOPE, Photo Miami, Pulse, Verge, DesignMiami, Art Basel Miami Beach - can't, and that's diversity under one roof. 

In Toronto there's a weird medley of anything that defines itself as art - emerging street artists, bucolic oil landscapes, neo pop collages from China, Muybridge collotypes, Damien Hirst hearts, abstract Canadian icons or newly hyped things.

Which comes to my favorite point: how are all these different things all considered art?

For example Mateo Rivano's installation at the Art Gallery of York University was my favorite booth. Collecting found frames or books from vintage stores, trash bins or the street, this Columbian artist then fills them with doodles, drawings and colors. Not limited by medium he also works with animation, installation, the street and sculpture. The way he talks about his work is neither highly conceptual or simple production. If I try to boil down with the simplest of reasoning why I like his images: they are pleasant funny narrations with an aesthetic I like. 

Now if I try to boil down with the simplest of reasoning my take on the "weird medley" mentioned in the second paragraph of this post it goes as such: the tacky landscapes with the unmissable touch of orange, pink or purple; the crappy Chinese photo collages of Western 'icons'; the simple and so important Muybridges; the overrated and flatly boring but highly lucrative butterflies by Hirst; the captivatingly abstract and poignant Ron Martins; and the somewhat too glittery new stuff by Kim Dorland.

But all of it is art. It was all shown at a fair, made with intention, possibly bought after a powerful interaction and packed with care.

Post ArtFair Thoughts: The Difference between Priceless Art and the Commodification of Art into a Buyable Brand

Commodification 101: Haring Chocolat at Le Bon Marché

I was working at Toronto Art, an art fair, last week and was reminded - yet again - the uneasiness that emerges whenever art and monetary worth start mingling. As if the price of artistic objects was either intrinsically random or totally unable to capture its 'auratic' value.

But while the worth of art is an uneasy business for some art fair visitors, mass consumption culture has very good at making sure art's aura would be made (more) accessible and (very much) acceptably buyable.

In an article entitled "Consuming Caravaggio" (2006) Kent Drummond traces the migration of Caravaggio’s art from a small elite's secret to mass market knowledge. In order to develop how the public-at-large has come to know Caravaggio and experience the Caravaggio brand he divides the process into three ‘portals:’ the ‘appropriation’ of the artistic work by a limited group (like the Damien Hirst sale); the ‘commercialization’ of the oeuvre in which promotion and distribution activities broaden the scale of the audience and “lower its symbolic capital” (think the Basquiat movie or blockbuster MoMA exhibitions) and finally the ‘commodification’ portal which, with greater advertising, graphics and fashion engenders Jean Baudrillard’s notion of simulacra and idea that the 'image is all'.

Indeed in his book Simulations (1983) Baudrillard sums up the idea of commodification as “the creation and consumption of a system of objects by which the consumer can define him/herself at a profoundly superficial level. Here one doesn’t buy a t-shirt; one lives the lifestyle.” The process is the epiphany of “hyper-reality:” when ‘real’ identities are fully based on referents that have been totally dissolved in the mechanisms of capitalism.

Recently Montreal's Ogilvy's windows displayed Otto Dix reproductions with its fall mannequins. Slightly awkward this example of commodification is simultaneously an attempt to promote a slightly obscure artist's show in a museum that needs coolness and a fancy commercial department store trying to align its own products with those coined art. Dix's ideas are diluted, as his work is used for its aura - or lifestyle it is associated to (cultured wealthy bourgeois) - more than anything else. 

Commodification 102: Otto Dix is Fall Fashion at Montreal's Ogilvy's

I think the uneasiness of having an event dedicated to the pricing of art lies in that art supposedly implies the viewer/consumer questions the objects' value, aesthetic, discourse, aura, whereas brands and stores will never invite one to ask questions - either buy or don't, either own or don't, either identify or don't. With art there is a precarious midway: art invites to stand, look, wait, ponder, judge, attempt to understand.  And this flux state engendered by a supposedly priceless object (an art object) can only have a socially acceptable price tag when it has been transformed/commodified, or in Baudrillard's terms liquidated of meaning, when it takes the form of a chocolate box or background for mannequins wearing Fall's styles. 

Quotes: Smith, Terry. “Production.” Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff ed. Critical Terms for Art History, Second Edition. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2003. 376

Koyaanisqati - The Existence of a Past Everyday

On the premise that facebook hinders honourable graduation, during my MA I refused to get an internet connection. Consequently most of my free home time was animated by a UCL library video collection binge. An eclectic - very francophile, Scandinavian savvy and sound oriented - but nonetheless impressive collection.

Among the Bergmans, Vilgot Sjöman and Éric Rohmer, I rented all of the Qatsi trilogy after a Post-Colonial Visual Culture class during which the last film, Naqoyqatsi (2002), was torn apart for its condescending universalism. Still I got really obsessed with Koyaanisqati (1982) - the first in the trilogy - and watched it twenty times over a weekend (London can be very rainy). Sometimes as background (a Philip Glass soundtrack) music, sometimes as a whole, sometimes as extracts, sometimes as loops, sometimes to observe what the 1980s everyday looked like: what were the colours of billboards or on planes? What forms were cars and trucks taking? What were lighting systems like? What was makeup like? Technology like? Outfits like? Hairstyles? Glasses? Traffic systems? Smoking habits?

While aspects this 'experimental' documentary are sometimes condescending (the title of the film does translate as Life Out of Balance) and underneath its 'objective' looking images has a clunky and at times desperately unsubtle social comment, my curiosity for the everyday overruled all of it....

Yesterday I was in nyc's midtown eating soap in a front window - it felt like television. And watching people on their cellphones bustling around reminded of my obsession for this 'experimental' documentary by Godfrey Reggio with music by Philip Glass:

How did people look when they lived without cellphones?