AESTHETIC POLLUTION AND THE SOUL OF DESIGN - Kalle Lasn
Kalle Lasn
Aesthetic Pollution and the Soul of Design Adbusters Culture Jamming
Naomi Klein Marty D. Matlock, Naomi Klein Gee thonson Kalle Lasn
Passo 2: Arrazar a concorrĂŞncia Ecosystem Services Design Ethics A paisagem citadina trasnformada em marc The Global Rush The Reconquest of Cool
Lucciene Roberts
Good: An introdution to ethics in graphic design
Katherine McCoy
Advertisin and the industrial revolution
Kalle Lasn nasceu em 1942 na Estónia. Durante o final da Segunda Guerra Mundial sua família fugiu da Estónia e este passou sua infância num campo de refugiados alemães. Depois de viajar para Australia em 1960 fundou uma empresa de mercado em Tóquio, e em 1970 mudou-se para Vancouver (Canadá). Durante 20 anos produziu documentários para a PBS. É o fundador da revista Adbusters, o autor dos livros Culture Jam e Design Anarchy e cofundador da Adbusters Media Foundation.
Nos dias que decorrem, onde a produção desregrada parece ser uma obrigação, onde chegar ao topo da hierarquia demonstra ser o único objectivo a atingir sem preocupações exteriores, e onde a noção de bem-estar parece estar cada vez mais associada aos ideais de consumismo acarretados pela revolução industrial, há uma necessidade urgente de alterar esse ciclo. No texto Aesthetic Pollution and the Soul of Design (de Kalle Lasn) este fala a cerca de alguns dos problemas actuais da sociedade e questiona se conseguiremos ultrapassalos. Refere que a alma do design está a ser corrompida pelos anuncios e propagandas reforçando que temos de ter uma atitude activa na luta contra essa poluição. Na minha opinião o problema pode estar situado em três pontos: Individualismo, Moda e Educação. O Individualismo, onde as pessoas, as empresas e os países tentam alcançar seus objectivos sem medir as consequências dos seus actos. A Moda que como um vírus, atinge tudo e todos desencadeando cada vez mais uma lógica de “eu compro”, “eu quero” e o “eu tenho”. E finalmente a Educação, e esta sim a mais importante delas todas, pois é através desta que todas outras podem ser resolvidas (pelo menos em parte). Há assim uma necessidade de reavaliação de bem-estar, de uma atitude mais pensada por parte de todos e principalmente um espírito crítico.
AESTHETIC POLLUTION AND THE SOUL OF DESIGN
Aesthetic Pollution and the Soul of Design de Kalle Lasn fala-nos a cerca da propaganda e no que esta tem implicado na nossa profissão de Designer. Refere como o consumismo gera falsas emoções, da constante criação de produtos de curta duração e da tralha visual que tem contaminado as revistas através das publicidades. Menciona também que já a 50 anos temos trabalhado para glorificar as empresas e que o marketing tem tirado o espírito da profissão. De seguida põe em questão: Conseguiremos criar uma nova estética de revista e transcender a morte da impressão? Conseguiremos criar produtos sustentáveis e tirar a nossa cidade deste rumo de resíduos? Diz também que já é visivel algumas respostas nos trabalhos de artistas como: Kenya Hara e Banksy... Os primeiros passos na luta pela alma da nossa profissão será a ousadia impor-se contra os outdoors que nos rodeiam, combater os vírus antidemocráticos que invadem o ciberespaço e resistir à corrupção de nossas identidades por marcas. O nosso século será uma época de grandes confrontos ideológicos, de mudanças de paradigma e de guerra meta-meme em todas as frentes. Como designers, devemos ser os guardas de antecedência - posicionando-nos na vanguarda de todas as lutas e debates.
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“Just as farmers are the keepers of land, we are the keepers of mindscape.We must nurture it and care for it and make sure that there will always be wilderness, diversity and freedom there.� 5
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Adbusters: Magazine: Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not-for-profit, reader-supported, 120,000-circulation magazine concerned about the erosion of our physical and cultural environments by commercial forces. Our work has been embraced by organizations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, has been featured in hundreds of alternative and mainstream newspapers, magazines, and television and radio shows around the world.
Culture Jamming
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Culture jamming is the primary means through which Adbusters challenges consumerism. The magazine was described by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in their book The Rebel Sell as "the flagship publication of the culture jamming movement". Culture jamming is heavily influenced by the Situationist International and the tactic of dĂŠtournement. The goal is to interrupt the normal consumerist experience in order to reveal the underlying ideology of an advertisement, media message, or consumer
artifact. Culture jamming aims to challenge the large, influential corporations that control mainstream media and the flow of information. It is a form of protest. The term ‘jam’ contains more than one meaning, including improvising, by re-situating an image or idea already in existence, and interrupting, by attempting to stop the workings of a machine.
Anti-advertising Adbusters is anti-advertising: it blames advertising for playing a central role in creating, and maintaining, consumer culture. This argument is based on the fact that the advertising industry goes to great effort and expense to associate desire and identity with commodities. Adbusters believes that advertising has unjustly "colonized" public, discursive and psychic spaces, by appearing in movies, sports and even schools, so as to permeate modern cultures. Adbusters' goals include combating the negative effects of advertising and empowering its readers to regain control of culture, encouraging them to ask "Are we consumers and citizens?". To counter the belief that advertising focuses on looking toward external rewards for a sense of self, Adbusters recognizes a “natural and authentic self apart from the consumer society”. The ma-
gazine aims to provoke anti-consumerist epiphanies. By juxtaposing text and images, the magazine creates a means of raising awareness and getting its message out to people that is both aesthetically pleasing and entertaining.
Digital Detox Week
In April 2009 Adbusters transformed TV Turnoff Week into Digital Detox Week, encouraging citizens to spend seven days “unplugged” without any of electronic devices such as video game systems and computers. 7
INDIVIDUALISMO –
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Passo 2: arrasar a concorrência Naomi Klein
Como qualquer outro jogador competitivo, a Nike sabe bem qual é o seu trabalho: vencer. Mas a vitória, para a Nike, é muito mais do que uma guerra de ténis. É claro que a Nike odeia a Adidas, a Fila e a Reebok, mas, mais importante, Phil Knight travou combates com representantes desportivos, cuja ganância individual, segundo ele afirma, os coloca «intrínseca e constantemente em conflito com interesses dos atletas»; com a NBA, que segundo ele apanhou injustamente boleia na máquina de criação de estrelas da Nike; e com o Comité Olímpico Internacional, cujo elitismo e corrupção foi censurado po Knight muito antes dos escândalos de corrupção dessa organização de 1999. No mundo da Nike, todos os clubes, associações e comités desportivos oficiais estão
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a destruir o espírito desportivo – um espírito que só a Nike verdadeiramente encarna e valoriza. Assim, ao mesmo tempo que a máquina de mitos da Nike fabricava a ideia de equipa Nike, a equipa empresarial Nike imaginava formas de ter um papel mais central no desporto profissional. Primeiro a Nike tentou desalojar os agentes desportivos ao criar a sua própria agência, não só para representar atletas nas negociações de contratos, mas também para desenvolver estratégias integradas de marketing para os seus clientes que certamente iriam completar – e não diluir – a estratégia da marca, muitas vezes forçando outras companhias a adoptarem os seus próprios conceitos publicitários.
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Ecosystem Services Design Ethics Marty D. Matlock, Robert Morgan
Gadugi, the Cherokee cultural ideal of coming together and working for the benefit of the community, embodies the notion of an ecosystem services design ethic. This is an ethic born of the struggle for existence that depends directly on ecosystem services. The recognition that we are all in this together acknowledges the inherent limitations of resources upon which community prosperity depends.The notion that this approach is in some way communist or socialist is simply cynical and short-sighted, and is often derived from the frontier myth of individualism as the dominant resource management strategy. That approach has resulted in much of the loss of ecosystem services documented in Chapter 1, and will ultimately lead to global decline in human prosperity, Gadugi design principles embody the lessons of Hurricane Katrina; we are all in this together, and must work across boundaries and barriers to achieve our common goals.
A paisagem citadina trasnformada em marca Naomi Klein
A trajectória de expansão da indústria das marcas revelou-se aos londrinos como um auto religioso, num dos feriados de 1997.Tudo começou quando a Associação de Regent Street se viu sem dinheiro suficiente para substituir as discretas luzes de Natal que normalmente decoravam esse rua durante essa época festiva. Surgiu a Yves Saint Laurent, que generosamente se ofereceu para assumir os custos das novas decorações, em troca da colocação do seu logótipo no meio das luzes. Mas quando chegou o momento de pendurar as luzes de Natal, parece que os logótipo YSL eram muito maiores do que tinha sido acordado. De tantos em tantos metros, cartazes iluminados com 5,5 metros de altura lembravam aos compradores que lhes tinha oferecido o Natal. Os emblemas acabaram por ser substituídos por outros mais pequenos, mas a lição permaneceu: o papel do patrocinador, como o da publicidade em geral, tem tendência para alargar. Embora os patrocinadores empresariais do passado pudessem ficar satisfeitos com a simples decoração de eventos comunitários, os construtores de marcas em busca de sugnificado nunca aceitarão este
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papel durante muito tempo. A industria das marcas é, no seu âmago, um empreendimento profundamente competitivo, no qual as marcas não defrontam apenas os seus rivais directos (outras marcas), mas contra todas as outras marcas no panorama mediático, incluindo os eventos e pessoas que patrocinam. Esta é talvez a mais cruel ironia da criação das marcas: a maioria dos fabricantes e retalhistas começam por procurar cenas autenticas, causas importante e eventos acarinhados pelo público para que estas coisas confiram significado as suas marcas. Tais gestos são frequentemente motivados por admiração e generosidade genuínas. Com demasiada frequência, contudo, a natureza expansiva do processo de criação de marcas acaba por provocar usurpação desse evento, criando uma situação em que todos ficam a perder. Não só os fans começam a ter uma sensação se alienação (se não mesmo verdadeiro ressentimento) em relação aos eventos culturais que outrora acarinhavam, como também os patrocinadores perdem aquilo de que mais precisam: um sentimento de autenticidade com que possam associar suas marcas.
MODA/ COOL/ MEME/
The Global Rush Gee Thompson
Obsessive and addictive behaviour at the individual level has its own concerns – anxieties that range from petty fears over status, to stress-related disorders, depression and, in some extreme cases, even suicide. But at the international level the dominance of viral culture takes on an altogether more harrowing perspective. Western civilization’s most potent meme is the spell of modern lifestyle, embodied in its technology, products, homes, entertainment, music and architecture. And it is this single universal dream, propelled by notions of ‘faster’, ‘more comfort’ and ‘newer’, that drives the global mind. Such spells have become the role models that the majority of the world are following – or aspire to emulate. These are the cultural bulldozers of our mind. It’s a ‘one size fits all’ prescription that comes with a barb in its tail. Nearly 70 years of the post-war economy have created both extraordinary success stories and catastrophic failures. Commercialism and globalization are two stories told back to back. Empowerment/ repression, freedom/enslavement, wealth creation/impoverishment; your version will be largely dependent on where you were born. The future heralds an even greater dichotomy: How do we balance the need for future progress, where global affluence will lift millions in developing nations (such as
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India and the Far East) out poverty, against a juggernaut culture that, in using more of the world’s energy resources, will have deeper impact an environmental degradation, resource conflict and global warming? World economies are precarious at best.The well-being of billions of us, rich and poor, is dependent (either directly or indirectly) on the health of international trade. Our jobs, hopes of promotion, ability to pay off our debts and mortgages and fund our children’s education is dependent on economic harmony. Does wonderland and its dreams of the good life become a necessary illusion, an ‘optimum state’ that we need to quietly accept, even protect, in order to maintain fragile economic stability and keep the dreaded spectre of world recession bay? Fundamental change is clearly necessary. But inspired political vision and resolve is conspicuously missing. Enzio Manzini, professor at the University of Milan, likens the process of moving from a high consumer world, to a low waste society, to changing the engines of an aircraft in mid-flight. Perhaps the still painful memory of the failure of two of the most disastrous social experiments of the last century have undermined our courage for innovation and sweeping social change?
The Reconquest of Cool Kalle Lasn
From its roots in Africa through to the youth cultures of the present day, cool has always been an attitude of resistance to subjugation, an expression of rebellion and a posture of defiance. During the ’60s, in the midst of one of the biggest cultural revolutions of our time, corporations discovered that cool could be incredibly profitable.While young people spontaneously took to the streets and organized festivals and anti-war protests, corporations started raiding their counterculture for eye-catching signifiers and stylistic expressions to incorporate into their marketing campaigns. Thus began a two-step dance of authentic cool and fake, commercialized cool. As Thomas Frank explains in his 1997 book, The Conquest of Cool, bit by bit cool “became central to the way capitalism understood itself and explained itself to the public.” In one of the most stunning cultural coups d’état ever, ad agency gurus figured out “how to construct cultural machines that transform alienation and despair into consent.” Forty years after the corporate takeover of cool, we find ourselves again in an era of extraordinary cultural and political upheaval. Global warming has us running scared, an epidemic of mood disorders is eroding our confidence, and as the War on Terror morphs into an open-ended World War IV, we are feeling more insecure than ever.
Suddenly, people are waking up in droves from the dreamland of corporate cool. We’re realizing that ever since we were little babies crawling around the TV sets in our living rooms, we’ve been lied to, propagandized, and told incessantly, day after day, that we can find happiness through consumption. That’s why, like rats in a Skinner box, we’ve kept on pressing that BUY button – millions of us marching in lockstep, all dreaming the same consumerist dream. Now the fog is lifting. We’re finally beginning to understand where this bogus cool has been leading us: not to happiness and prosperity as promised in the ads, but to cynicism, ecocide and a brutal, dog-eatdog future. This is the magic moment in which capitalist cool can stumble and authentic cool can start bubbling back up again. And after decades of wandering around the wilderness, we on the Left are finally realizing what that magic moment is all about. Clive Hamilton – author of Growth Fetish and Affluenza – nails it in his 2006 article, “What’s Left? The Death of Social Democracy,” when he writes, “The defining problem of modern industrial society is not injustice but alienation... the central task of progressive politics today is to achieve not equality, but liberation.” Forget about treating the symptoms. Forget about the hedgemaze of identity politics. Break away from the glorious equality and social justice battles of the past. Instead, liberate yourself from the capitalist mindfuck. Learn to live without dead time. Start generating authentic cool from the bottom up again. The rest will follow.
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EDUCAÇÃO: REAVALIAR A NOÇÃO DE BEM-ESTAR Good: An introdution to ethics in graphic design Lucciene Roberts
In his essay Runaway World, David Goldblatt argued for a realignment of ideas about where quality and happiness lie: ‘This could be of enormous benefit to designers: First, environmentalists have argued that the simple equation between abundance and the good life is flawed. Abundance and affluence bring their own problems. A good life is something greater than the sume of what we can manage to consume before we die. This is a rich if underworked seam for a politics of the good life that is based on the qualitative texture of experience rather than the quantitative accumulation of things... we will only curb our voracious environmental appetites and have the opportunity to cultivate alternative sources of the good life we are prepared collectively and individually to re-evaluate the meaning of wealth and well-being.’ The blaim, if you like, lies with us all. In the over-abundant West we don’t even pay properly for the essentials, like food. Cheap must surely be best, because it means we can buy more. Sustainability may be forced upon us, but the result is likely to be a better quality of life. Our understanding of value for money needs to be reconfigured. This isn’t about buying nothing, but it is about buying less and paying and valuing it more. (...) 12
“We need to teach that the important intimate relationship is not between the design rand the board/screen/ image, but between the presentation of the information and the users of that information.” Patrick Whitney, Institut of Design, IIT
Advertisin and the industrial revolution Katherine McCoy
Graphic design was a spontaneous response to the communication needs of the industrial revolution in the capitalist market-based economies, invented to sell the fruits of mass production in growing consumer societies. This had led to the unfortunate assumption that visual communication is subset of advertising. Many schools in the United States persist in defining the whole field of activity as advertising design or commercial art. Yet, all societies have far broader communication needs than strictly commercial ones. Marxist and socialist political and economic systems have not labored under such a definition, as they have not had the same needs for market-based commercial messages. It seems that the more socialized a country, the more graphic design is associated with cultural and political roles on the side of either propaganda or resistance. In the past three decades, many free-market countries have gradually recognized that there are graphic needs beyond advertising, leading to a
split between advertising art direction and “pure” graphic design. (…) Art schools and university art departments have been slow to realize that design is not simply commercial application of fine arts ideas and processes. Acceptance of graphic design as a separate and distinct discipline – with significantly different intentions, history, theory, methods, and process – has been quite slow. Compounding the problem has been growing eagerness among university art departments to compensate for shrinking fine arts enrollments with graphic design programs, whether prepared or not. Entrenched fine arts faculty are teaching graphic design and many start-up graphic design programs rely on just one inexperienced M.F.A design graduate. As a result, the number of mediocre university-level graphic design programs has grown drastically in recent years, diluting significant progress in the graphic design education community.
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Kalle Lasn
Aesthetic Pollution and the Soul of Design / Adbusters.com Adbusters / Adbusters.com Culture Jamming / Adbusters.com
Naomi Klein Marty D. Matlock, Naomi Klein Gee thonson Kalle Lasn
Passo 2: Arrazar a concorrĂŞncia / No Logo
Ecosystem Services Design Ethics / Ecological Engineering Design: Restoring and Conserving Ecosyste A paisagem citadina trasnformada em marca / No Logo The Global Rush / Mesmerization The Reconquest of Cool / Adbusters.com
Lucciene Roberts
Good: An introdution to ethics in graphic design
Katherine McCoy
Advertisin and the industrial revolution / The education of a Graphic Designer
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em Services
Universidade de Lisboa / Faculdade de Belas-Artes/ DC V Paulo Albuquerque, nยบ ยบ 4 792 1