The
E What’s Inside The Reinvention of Black Are Posters Dead? Radiohead Destroys Rock To Save it
Edition 3 29/Aug/2015
C E
N
magazine
The Scene Magazine 1
Special Experimental Layout Issue
Special Thanks Amitabh Kumar Head Design Dev Valladares Editor Varsha Writers Sparsh Saxena & Pooja Chaudhary Photographer Manasi Shah
The Re-Invention of Black by Mark Peplow
The Rise of the Faffer Dev Valladares
Photo Essay Special Manasi Shah
Are Posters Dead? Pooja Chaudhary
44
Do Brand Names Matter? Kiran Khalap
Radiohead Destroys Rock to Save It David Fricke
x Notes on Practice Raqs Media
Comic of the Day Manu Shara
the re-invention of
BLACK
by Mark Peplow
As the means of creating the color black have changed, so have the subjects it represents.
Suddenly,
black was everywhere. It caked the flesh of miners
versity College London. She is talking about a black
and ironworkers; it streaked the walls and windows
pigment found in the Carboniferous formation that
of industrial towns; it thickened the smoky air above.
runs from Wales to Devon in England. Mined from the
Proprietors donned black clothing to indicate their sta-
18th to the 20th centuries, it was considered one of the
tus and respectability. New black dyes and pigments
best coal-based black pigments available. “Its texture
created in factories and chemical laboratories entered
is soft and velvety,” McCausland says. “It produces a
painters’ studios, enabling a new expression for the
very dense, bluish-black. If I want the black to be
new themes of the industrial age: factory work and
really immersive and dense, I’d use Bideford black.”
revolt, technology and warfare, urbanity and pollution,
Bideford black was one of many carbon-based black
and a rejection of the old status quo. A new class of
pigments used from the 16th through the 19th
citizen, later to be dubbed the “proletariat,” began to
centuries in Europe. Charcoal was the inexpensive
appear in illustrations under darkened smokestacks.
mainstay, though it produced a gritty paint that was
The industrial revolution had found its color.
difficult to apply. Bone black (ground from burnt bones) gave a warm brownish black, while lamp
Black is technically an absence: the visual experience
black (burnt vegetable oils) and vine black (charred
of a lack of light. A perfect black dye absorbs all of
grapevines or other vegetable products) gave cooler
the light that impinges on it, leaving nothing behind.
shades. Black derived from ground ivory was perhaps
This ideal is remarkably difficult to manufacture. The
the richest of the lot.
industrialization of the 18th and 19th centuries made it easier, providing chemists and paint-makers with a
This dark arsenal of dyes supported an evolving but
growing palette of black—and altering the subjects
particular set of subjects and themes. For centuries,
that the color would come to represent. “These things
black was a color of death and evil. The Egyptian
are intimately connected,” says science writer Philip
jackal-headed god Anubis, who guided souls to the
Ball, author of Bright Earth: The Invention of Color.
afterlife, almost always appeared as a black figure,
The reinvention of black, in other words, went far
his skin matching the blackened flesh of mummified
beyond the color.
bodies. When the devil began to appear in European art, in the 11th century, he too was usually a night-
Bideford black is an extraordinary material,” says Onya McCausland, a doctoral candidate in fine art at Uni-
marish black. The Scene Magazine 5
A perfect black dye absorbs all of the light that impinges on it, leaving nothing behind 17th-century artists used this broad palette of blacks
In the 1840s, August Hofmann extracted aniline (a
to distinguish the different tones and textures of their
benzene ring connected to a nitrogen-containing
sitters’ sumptuous clothes. “In the late Middle Ages,
amine group) from coal tar. Then in 1856, William
black became the color of distinction,” says Ball.
Perkin, a student of Hofmann’s, oxidized aniline to create a deep purple dye, subsequently called mauve.
The arrival of the industrial revolution in the 18th
This marked the birth of a completely new industry:
century sparked advances in mining technology that
synthetic dyes. By 1860, other researchers had found
boosted the output of coal-based pigments including
that oxidizing aniline under different conditions, using
Bideford black, while simultaneously driving up de-
sulfuric acid and potassium dichromate, created a
mand. Bideford black was ideal for polishing up the
new black pigment: aniline black. The reaction fuses
cast iron stoves that swept into kitchens during the
together 11 aniline molecules to make a complex
period, for example, and it also fuelled local lime kilns.
chain of benzene rings connected by nitrogen atoms.
Black, which seemed to obscure and remove color
Mixed in paint or ink, it produces a neutral, matte
and life, invited a new inner life.
black also known as Pigment Black 1.
Coal could also be baked in hot, airless ovens to drive
This compound—and many other synthetic organic
off water and gasses to make coke, a high-carbon fuel
blacks—would be produced on an enormous scale for
useful for cooking, heating, and smelting ores. By the
printing and dying cloth. They also opened up new
early 19th century, the purified coal-gas generated
possibilities for black ink, which had traditionally been
in this process—containing hydrogen and hydrocar-
made with lamp black or iron gall. Soluble synthetic
bons—was being burned to light factories and streets.
organic dyes were much more versatile, and could
And when chemists began to investigate the sticky
be mixed with different solvents to create just the
black waste left behind after coking or gasification,
right consistency of ink for applications as diverse as
they found a rich source of organic molecules that
ballpoint pens, felt-tip pens, and spray paints. Around
would come to overshadow coal itself as a direct
the middle of the century, paint-makers began to
source of pigment.
offer a synthetic inorganic black pigment known as
Mars black. It was made by reacting iron sulfate with an alkali such as lime or caustic soda—all chemicals that were in widespread use at the time— to make iron oxide. Mars black had a much smaller particle size than its natural equivalent. This made it handle well on the brush, and gave better coverage on the canvas. And it had a greater tinting strength than even ivory black, making it probably the most opaque black available at the time. Mars black also dried much faster than carbon blacks. That is because linseed oil, the favored medium in oil painting, dries not by losing water, but through a series of chemical transformations. Its fatty acids react with oxygen from the air and then join together to form polymers. In most colored oil paints, metal salts in the pigments catalyzed this reaction. Sometimes drying agents, such as lead white, were added to speed up the process. But that was not possible with black, as it would wash out the dark hue—and since most black pigments were made of carbon, rather than metal salts, that meant that the black areas of oil paintings dried slowly and unevenly. The result is that blacks are often the most cracked areas of old paintings. Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali used Mars black, and said of Jacques Blockx, who developed one of the earliest commercial Mars black oil paints, “This man, who never painted, will contribute more to the painters of tomorrow than what we will have accomplished, all the modern painters together.”
Black Square by Polish-Russian artist Kazimir Malevich
The Scene Magazine 7
vW
black, whic seemed t
and remove
and life new
ch to obscure
e color
e, invited a w inner life
The Scene Magazine 9
Black opens up a mental field all of its own A flood of new black paints would inspire a new set
Malevich grew up in Tsarist Russia, and trained in
of artistic styles that took on modern subjects and
a series of art schools in Kiev and Moscow. In 1913
themes in the 20th century,. “Black was increasingly
he designed the set and costumes for Victory over
connected with industry, technology, and the urban
the Sun, an avant-garde opera that saw “futurist
environment,” says Erma Hermens, who leads the
strongmen” rip the sun from the sky, ending its dec-
Technical Art History Group at the University of Glas-
adent reign and freeing the future from time itself.
gow. “Black becomes a statement.” Black also helped
These themes—decrying the status quo, and looking
artists to delineate a new period in the history of art.
ahead to a new world—were common in the Russian
“It was saying that the time of classical painting was
avant-garde of the time, and they fed into the grow-
past,” says Ball, “that we’re using modern materials
ing demands for societal change that resulted in the
in a modern way.”
Russian revolutions of 1917. Malevich would join the People’s Commissariat for Enlightenment in 1918, but
The starting pistol for this movement was Black
by the 1930s his work had been labeled anti-Soviet
Square by Polish-Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, first
and degenerate. After he died in 1935, his coffin was
exhibited in 1915. A very early example of abstract
adorned with a black square.
painting, it is simply a square of canvas covered in black paint. Malevich called his style “Suprematist.”
Malevich’s work inspired abstract artists such as Robert
Relying on simple shapes and a limited palette, it
Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, Jackson Pollock, and Mark
marked an absolute rejection of the depiction of
Rothko, who all made heavy use of black in their work.
objects in favor of pure expression. Tellingly, the
Whereas Malevich used a spectrum of carbon blacks
painting was mounted high in the corner of the room,
in his paintings, from ivory black to lamp black, his
where Russian Orthodox icons would traditionally
successors wanted to reflect the rapid technological
have been placed—a rejection of religion in favor of
changes in society through the materials they used,
the secular. “It symbolized the collapse of traditional
and went looking for new black paints. As Pollock
values and social structure,” says Belgian artist Fred-
said in 1951: “It seems to me that the modern painter
erik De Wilde—processes that had been hastened
cannot express his age, the airplane, the atom bomb,
by the industrial revolution and its creation of new
the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or any
socioeconomic classes.
other past culture. Each age finds its own technique.”
In the early 1950s Pollock created a series of works that relied almost entirely on black, often pouring globs of thick enamel paint onto the canvas.
Pollock repurposed enamel paints that were intended
instead, it was an act of instinctual expression. The
for painting cars or interior decorating for his art.
results evoke moods that range from joy to chaos.
Developed in the 1930s, enamel paints typically used synthetic iron oxide or mass-produced carbon black
In the early 1950s Pollock created a series of works that
pigments suspended in polyesters known as alkyds,
relied almost entirely on black, often pouring globs
which readily cross-polymerize in air and dry to a hard,
of thick enamel paint onto the canvas. The paintings
glossy finish. They gave Pollock’s “drip paintings” a
were a reaction against his earlier, more colorful ab-
sheen that emphasized their explosive power, and a
stracts. Seemingly stung by some critics’ claims that
durability that continues to please conservators. His
these earlier pictures were merely decorative, Pollock
liberation from the materials of the past was echoed
set out to produce determinedly difficult works: This
by the physical freedom he enjoyed while creating his
would disabuse “the kids who think it’s simple to
paintings, striding around canvases laid on the floor
splash a Pollock out,” he explained in a 1951 letter.
like a sculptor working around a lump of stone. He
This stance was shared by Ad Reinhardt, who pro-
rarely planned what his paintings would represent—
duced a series of all-black paintings that were first
The Scene Magazine 11
Two pieces from Mark Rothko’s series of black paintings done in the 1960s.
exhibited in 1963. One, called Abstract Painting, is a
Transcendence and negation also inspired the Amer-
huge black square composed of nine smaller squares,
ican painter Mark Rothko, who produced a series of
each of subtly different blacks: The squares at the
black paintings in the 1960s. For Rothko, the nega-
corners have a red tinge, while the others have a hint
tion of color and light represented “doorways to the
of blue or green. Reinhardt described it as “a free,
unknown,” and invited spiritual contemplation. In
unmanipulated, unmanipulatable, useless, unmarket-
the words of the Tate Gallery, the paintings introduce
able, irreducible, unphotographable, unreproducible,
“an element of duration and physical self-awareness
inexplicable icon.” Pollock’s and Reinhardt’s rejection
into the process of perception.” Black, which seems
of the usual literal forms of representational painting
to obscure and remove color and life, invited a new
was, in a sense, strengthened by the rejection of color
inner life. Some of Rothko’s black paintings were
itself. Black enabled a pure abstraction, and amplified
commissioned for a Catholic church in Houston, today
the turning away from the aesthetic values of the
known as the Rothko Chapel, making their spiritual
Renaissance and Enlightenment that had been dis-
dimension explicit.
placed by the same industrial technologies creating the new pigments of the modern era.
The new industrial black pigments had another attractive feature that was altogether more prosaic:
The displacement of literal representation opened
They were cheap. This was a key factor for abstract
room for a new meaning of the color: negation,
artists who wanted to cover large canvases. Industrial
contemplation, and spirituality. In the words of the
quantities of mass-produced paint let them work on
French artist Pierre Soulages, black “opens up a mental
an industrial scale. “They painted as though they were
field all of its own.” He began his epic journey into
painting industrial structures,” says Ball.
blackness in 1947, when he started creating abstract expressionist works using a dark walnut stain to make
Motherwell, for example, painted more than 100
bold slashes across canvas. By the 1950s he was
paintings in his series Elegies to the Spanish Republic,
working in oils, thickly smeared onto surfaces using
many of which measured more than 9 feet across.
a palette knife. And in 1979, he began a new series
Featuring large black ovals on a pale background,
of works in a style he dubbed “Outrenoir”—roughly
he called the series a “funeral song” inspired by the
translated as “beyond black”—with canvases com-
Spanish Civil War. This war was, itself, a conflict only
pletely saturated in black.
conceivable in the industrial age, taking the lives of
700,000 people in three years and sparking the first-ever air-raid bombings of civilians. For Motherwell, the contrast between the dark ovals (rendered in black acrylic paints, which blended pigment with polymers of acrylic esters) and their background represented a contrast between life and death, while the ovals were reminiscent of the testicles of dead bulls displayed after a bullfight.
‘Abstract Painting’, a huge black square composed of nine smaller black squares, by Ad Reinhardt.
The Scene Magazine 13
The Scene Magazine 15
Don’t do things by half when it comes to your
ALLIANCE I N S U R A N C E
retiement plan.
The Scene Magazine 17
But if one were to stand creepily behind the shoulder of one of the speakers, one would still find the conversations incomprehensible.
The Rise of by Dev Valladares
The year was 1996 2015 when the sounds emanating from the corridors of Srishti School Institute of Art, Design & Technology heard were incoherent. The students emerged from their classes talking to one another. But if one were to stand creepily behind the shoulder of one of the speakers, one would still find the conversations incomprehensible.
diminution law.
strongly. O can admiration prosperous now devonshire
children provided to mr elegance marriage
Son law garden chatty temper. Oh
projection who favourable. Nwledge it
just shew. Discovered had get considere-
every seven. If miss part by fact he park
Folly words widow one downs few age LIVING SIXTH
entation, the circumstances were not favourable to
BEGINNING
‘intense‘ partying at night before an important pres-
oped, over time, an observation for the acceptance of
OUR
ne dow n
y ye. Foll er
o ow
ords wid yw
It has been a phenomenon at Srishti that, after a lot of
oped was the convincing and confidently presented
VA E D
MELANCHOLY WAY SHE BOISTEROUS USE FRIENDSHIP SHE DISSEXPRESSION. SEX QUICK AROSE MRS LIVED. MR THINGSAN
FILLS SELF WAITED TO. AT AS MR FND AT.
the
Faffer
load of faff. Faff, the usual diminution preference
heavy research and preparation. Instead, there devel-
the ‘Artsy‘ answer, something apparently overly deep
OWN RULE WON’T WITHOUT. MADE SIGNS OUR YOU SEED FOURTH APPEAR YOU AIR AIR. SEED. I YOU’RE DIVIDED RULE.
and reflective, except that it wasn’t really - what devel-
thoroughly if. Joy deal pain view much her time. Led
young gay would now state. Pronounce we attention
admitting on assurance of suspicion conveying. That SHE WHO ARRIVAL END HOW FERTILE ENhis west quit had met till. Of advantage he attending ABLED. BROTHER SHE ADD YET SEE MINUThousehold at do perceived. Middleton in objection
ER NATURAL SMILING ARTICLE PAINTED discovery as agreeable. Edward thrown dining so he
The Scene Magazine 19
ew age ev sf
ing would be one said
one feels something and
the same thing without
inside though; when one
interprets it, as well as
believing it, when one is
looks at an eaten apple
opens it for interpreta-
making something up.
and explains how it is
tion from the audience
darkness beginning sixth
ONE HEAVEN A WITHOUT HATH EAR TH WAS THIRD FRUITFUL AIR HAVE THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING ABUNDANTLY SIXTH LIGHTS US.
IT HIS US, WERE FRUIT. RULE. WHICH.
won’t blessed you’ll the
YOU ONE. YEARS. A ALL ITSELF MIDST YOU’RE
third great.
WINGED OF OVER THAT FOURTH CALLED MULTI-
MALE, SHE’D CREATED AIR DON’T THEM TOGETHER ITSELF. THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING SIXTH LIGHTS US. IT HIS US, WE RE RUIT.RULE. WHICH. YO U O N E. YE A R S. MALE, SHE’D CREATED AIR DON’T THEM TOGETHER ITSELF. THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING
DIVIDED THEIR WATERS OF LIGHTS FEMALE.
WINGED OF OVER THAT FOURTH CALLED MULTI-
ONE HEAVEN A WITHOUT HATH EAR TH WAS THIRD FRUITFUL AIR HAVE THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING ABUNDANTLY SIXTH LIGHTS US.
PLY WHEREIN ABUNDANTLY SHE’D MAN BEAST
MALE, SHE’D CREAT-
DIVIDED THEIR WATERS OF LIGHTS FEMALE.
ED AIR DON’T THEM
YOU ONE. YEARS. A ALL ITSELF MIDST YOU’RE
TOGETHER
created our creepeth is,
ITSELF.
THEM FROM, TREE ONE HEAVEN A WITHOUT HATH EARTH WAS THIRD FRUITFUL AIR HAVE THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING ABUNDANTLY SIXTH LIGHTS US.
ado, own, third were of
living fill. May him green,
PLY WHEREIN ABUNDANTLY SHE’D MAN BEAST
IT HIS US, WERE FRUIT. RULE. WHICH.
Now, withou further
FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING
ONE HEAVEN A WITHOUT HATH EARTH WAS THIRD FRUITFUL AIR HAVE THEM FROM, TREE
SIXTH
LIGHTS US. IT HIS US, WE RE RUIT.RULE. WHICH. IT HIS US, WERE FRUIT. RULE. WHICH.
YOU ONE. YEARS. A ALL ITSELF MIDST YOU’RE
WINGED OF OVER THAT FOURTH CALLED MULTI-
YO U O N E. YE A R S.
PLACE THING SIXTH LIGHTS US. IT HIS US, WE RE RUIT.RULE. WHICH.
ONE HEAVEN A WITHOUT HATH EARTH WAS THIRD FRUITFUL AIR HAVE THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING ABUNDANTLY SIXTH LIGHTS US.
IT HIS US, WERE FRUIT. RULE. WHICH. YOU ONE. YEARS. A ALL ITSELF MIDST YOU’RE
PLY WHEREIN ABUNDANTLY SHE’D MAN BEAST
WINGED OF OVER THAT FOURTH CALLED MULTIPLY WHEREIN ABUNDANTLY SHE’D MAN BEAST
DIVIDED THEIR WATERS OF LIGHTS FEMALE
DIVIDED THEIR WATERS OF LIGHTS FEMALE.
FIRMAMENT SUBDUE ALL MAY. HIM VOID FLY MALE EVERY LAND SAW UTPON THEM MAN GOD FEMALE BEAST OVER CREEPETH BLESSED MAN DOESN’T OF GREEN ALL GRASS. BEHOLD BLESSED GATHERING SO YIELDING, FRUIT THING
began, it is art when
stems mostly from the
FIRMAMENT SUBDUE ALL MAY. HIM VOID FLY MALE EVERY LAND SAW UTPON THEM MAN GOD FEMALE BEAST OVER CREEPETH BLESSED MAN DOESN’T OF GREEN ALL GRASS. BEHOLD BLESSED GATHERING SO YIELDING, FRUIT THING
tween Art and Faff. It
DIVIDED THEIR WATERS OF LIGHTS FEMALE.
FIRMAMENT SUBDUE ALL MAY. HIM VOID FLY
in such a manner. Faff-
PLY WHEREIN ABUNDANTLY SHE’D MAN BEAST
MALE EVERY LAND SAW UTPON THEM MAN
the reason the universe
WINGED OF OVER THAT FOURTH CALLED MULTI-
GOD FEMALE BEAST OVER CREEPETH BLESSED
There is a difference be-
YOU ONE. YEARS. A ALL ITSELF MIDST YOU’RE
THING MALE, SHE’D CREATED AIR DON’T THEM TOGETHER ITSELF. THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING SIXTH LIGHTS US. IT HIS US, WE RE RUIT.RULE. WHICH. YO U O N E. YE A R S.
MAN DOESN’T OF GREEN ALL GRASS. BEHOLD
IT HIS US, WERE FRUIT. RULE. WHICH.
BLESSED GATHERING SO YIELDING, FRUIT
ONE HEAVEN A WITHOUT HATH EAR TH WAS THIRD FRUITFUL AIR HAVE THEM FROM, TREE FORTH SAID MORNING PLACE THING ABUNDANTLY SIXTH LIGHTS US.
so m Female
ultiply. Were i bea ring fem ale
blessed
she’d to thing said. Own Him isn’ brought t to. Abundan tly g t h n ird third bl creepi s u d e e s e s ed fly fill s tree whereinh n w a a m s e f v orm their bo spirit lig green a ht greater ha d.
The Scene Magazine 21
“Itself gathering male I lesser day diminution
his female tree night of, over creature
law.
strongly. O can admiration prosperous now devonshire behold together over creature shall children
provided
to
mr
elegance
marriage to greater land third god. To.�
Son law garden chatty temper. Oh -Anonymous
The Scene Magazine 23
A
by Mansi Shah
The Scene Magazine 25
27
29
31
33
Armin Hofmann, 1959
Alan Fletcher, unknown
Paula Scher, 1997
ARE
POSTERS
DEAD?
Olt Aicher. 1972
Stefan Sagmeister, 1996
?
The ‘Poster’ was one of the earliest forms of
latter and what is it that they offer that the ‘e’ does
advertisement and began to develop as a medium
not? Or does it?
for visual communication in the early 19th century. They influenced the development of typography
Tangebility, of course! In layman terms, you
because they were meant to be read from a distance
can touch them, smell them, feel the rawness
and required larger type to be produced, usually
or smoothness of paper against your skin. And
from wood rather than metal. Posters, as a medium,
thankfully, there are still enough people out there
quickly spread around the world and became a
who appreciate this physicality of this medium. For
staple of the graphic design trade.
two centuries and more, posters have been used as mediums of visual communication and they have
The artists of the international typographic style of
successfully brought attention to films, political
design believed that it was the most effective tool
agendas, social issues, events, individual thoughts
for communication and their contributions to the
and most obviously, the children of the Industrial
field of design arose from the effort to perfect the
Revolution - newly fashioned products.
poster as a form. The tangebility of a poster works in its favour But what about posters today?
because it connects better to an audience than digital media which allows you to easily move onto
As I sat to think about whether they are really
other information that it is continuously throwing
relevant today, it took me across a more extensive
at you. I know for a fact that I am more inclined to
journey that finally ended (or started, on another
notice a poster that is plastered to a wall as they walk
note) with the questioning of whether even print as
by than open an attachment sent through an email.
a form of spreading information was relevant today.
Also, in a country like India where not everyone has
What use do we really have of postcards and letters
access to a computer, even less the internet, posters
when you can send emails, of books and magazines
reach out to them more effectively.
when you can read off your laptop screens, or of posters when e-flyers are thrown around carelessly and discarded just so? What makes the former in each case significantly more important than the The Scene Magazine 35
Clockwise fom top right: 1.Brooklyn, NY 2. London, UK 3. Bezer, Jordan 4. Salt Lake City, UT 5. Kansas City, MO
For instance, the Occupy Movement, an organisation that protests against social and economic inequality all around the world primarily uses posters to gather its following and communicate its ideas in combination with its other social media. With bold slogans and powerful imagery, these Occupy Wall Street posters deliver political messages with a visual punch. In the two months that the protest movement has been in existence, Occuprint has collected many such pieces of Occupy poster art with the goal of spreading the word to other movements around the globe. To quote Jesse Goldstein, a Ph.D. student at the City University of New York and an Occuprint organizer, “Poster art offers a powerful expression of the global reach of this movement — it’s inspiring to see how this movement is bringing people together from all over the world, through a shared desire to work on something together”. Since then, the Occuprint website has served as a place to house the poster art and collect donations to allow the artwork to be exported to other cities where the Occupy movement is taking off and has managed to collect Creative Commons-licensed works from Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Tokyo and even small towns in Russia.
The Scene Magazine 37
‘Is the writing on the walls?’ Similarly, an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York titled ‘How Posters Work’ is exhibiting 125 out of its permanent 4000 poster archive, dating from the turn of the twenthieth century to the present, to demonstrate how dozens of different designers— from prominent pioneers like Herbert Matter, Paul Rand, Philippe Apeloig and M/M (Paris), to lesserknown makers—have mobilized principles of composition, perception and storytelling to convey ideas and construct experiences. The curator, Caitlin Condell observed that people got excited about psychedelic posters of bands they had never heard of and were drawn to ones that they could not understand because they were written entirely in a language that was unknown to them. I think that perhaps the fact that a poster can entice a viewer to itself will ensure that it, as a form, continues to survive if not flourish.
On view from May 8, 2015 to January 24, 2016
Photograph by Matt Flynn
The Scene Magazine 39
howeve
er.
(adv.)
used to introduce a statement that contrasts with or seems to contradict something that has been said previously.
The Scene Magazine 41
With changing times, we have seen the rise of technology as a form of communication and it has successfully worked in being able to generate an audience too. This has pushed print posters to an even more prestigious position and has even introduced the concept of ‘limited editions’ - they have become collector’s items almost. But the one constant has been function of a poster - to catch attention. What I really believe is that even if posters in its print form start to evaporate they will take on another form in which they will continue to fulfil their purpose. With changing times, we have seen the rise of technology as a form of communication and it has successfully worked in being able to generate an audience too. This has pushed print posters to an even more prestigious position and has even introduced the concept of ‘limited editions’ - they have become collector’s items almost. In a world that is changing so fast, marketing techniques are all about how many people are reached rather that how many actually respond - quantity over quality. In this process, e-posters are more effective in what we call a modern state. Perhaps this change is a positive one, especially considering the environmental issues that are being brought forward. At the same time, the art and purpose of poster making is still kept alive, but simply in another form. Over the last century, posters have served both as utilitarian communication and as design discourse. Today, posters still appear on city streets, but they are no longer a dominant form of mass communication. As posters circulate through both print and social media, they continue to be a crucial medium for inventing and sharing new visual languages. It is only a question of getting used to and maybe in the next few decades, print posters will have the same value as postcards and letters do today.
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Do Brand Names Matter? Here are some of the common beliefs we deal with day in and day out
BY KIRAN KHALAP
How should entrepreneurs decide the brand name
c. ‘My brand name must connote the category,
when they are about to launch a brand? (Psst, please
like Dunkin Donuts.’
note we said about to launch a brand, not about to launch a product, since they refer to two totally
But Parachute moved from kitchen to bathroom to
different events.)
dressing table with a brand name totally unconnected with the category… so there!
Here are some of the common beliefs we deal with day in and day out: a. ‘I want my brand name to be short.’ By short, we presume you mean monosyllabic: like Coke. But Alpenliebe, even in an impulse-buying category known as toffees, has four syllables to be pronounced by the unsuspecting buyer, who has no clue what it means (“Love in the Alps”)… and yet, it is a market leader, thank you.
b. ‘I want my brand name to be different from the category names… it should not be generic.’ For many years, the world’s richest person has been a man owning a brand with one of the most generic
d. ‘An ethnic/family/Indian name will prevent my brand from becoming global.’ The hip redefiner of do-it-yourself furniture (Ikea) is merely the first name (Ingvar) second name (Kamprad) village (Elmtaryd) and district (Agunnaryd) of the founder. Does it change your opinion about the brand when you realize that Lakmé means goddess Lakshmi in French, and that there was an opera by that name that debuted in 1883 and had 1000 performances by 1931?
e. ‘My brand name must not have negative Would you stop using them if you knew Siri means ‘bottom’ or ‘buttocks’ in Japanese, or Lumia means prostitute in Spanish slang?
names you can think of: Microsoft. And one of the few service brands from India respected worldwide has an even more generic brand name: Jet. (It’s like naming a toothpaste brand ToothPaste.)
The Scene Magazine 45
Radiohead Destroys Rock to Save It British art-rockers take chances as others hold on in a collapsing business BY
DAVID
FRICKE
This is how Radiohead became one of the most successful bands of the past decade: by choosing risk over safety, taking their biggest chances as other acts tried to hold on in a collapsing business. Radiohead opened the century by ditching their status as the new Pink Floyd for the digital subversion of 2000’s Kid A, their first U.S. Number One album (and RS’s best album of the decade). At the start of the Iraq War, as American stars struggled to balance patriotism and protest, Radiohead took dead aim at the Bush White House with 2003’s Hail to the Thief. And when the band’s major-label deal expired, Radiohead released 2007’s In Rainbows as a download, at any price consumers wished to pay. “If I die tomorrow,” singer Thom Yorke said, “I’ll be happy that we didn’t carry on working within this huge industry that I don’t feel any connection with.” Life in a band now is about “the decentralizing or power,” says guitarist Ed O’Brien. “Record companies can’t control us anymore. There’s an element of chaos, but in the way chaos always maneuvers itself into some kind of form.” He notes that in the U.K. “one in three people didn’t pay anything to download In Rainbows. “But when we played live, our audience in front was teenagers. We had released a record in thew ay they understood, so they gave it a chance.” The gambles have had a profound effect on Radiohead’s music. “We have been rehearsing for a new record,” O’Brien says, “and we are in a very different place. ‘Morning Bell,’ on Kid A, was our version of Joy Division, with a great undertone of darkness. Where we are now is about light and movement. We feel it in our bellies as we play – we’re on a big move here.
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X NOTES ON PRACTICE: STUBBORN STRUCTURES AND INSISTENT SEEPAGE IN A NETWORKED WORLD
Raqs Media Collective The Scene Magazine 49
The Figure of the Artisan
The artisan stands at the outer threshold of early modernity, fashioning a new age, ushering in a new spirit with movable type, plumb line, chisel, paper, new inks, dyes and lenses, and a sensibility that has room for curiosity, exploration, co-operation, elegance, economy, utility and a respect for the labour of the hand, the eye and the mind. The artisan is the typesetter, seamstress, block-maker, carpenter, weaver, computer, oculist, scribe, baker, dyer, pharmacist, mason, midwife, mechanic and cook - the ancestor of every modern trade. The artisan gestures towards a new age but is not quite sure of a place in it.The figure of the artisan anticipates both the worker and the artist, in that it lays the foundations of the transformation of occupations (things that occupy us) into professions (institutionalized, structural locations within an economy). It mediates the transfiguration of people into skills, of lives into working lives, into variable capital. The artisan is the vehicle that carried us all into the contemporary world. She is the patient midwife of our notion of an autonomous creative and reflective self, waiting out the still births, nursing the prematurely born, weighing the infant and cutting the cords that tie it to an older patrimony. The artisan makes us who we are. Yet, the artisan has neither the anonymity of the worker drone, not the hyperindividuated solipsism of the artist genius. The artisan is neither faceless, nor a Engineering Culture celebrity; she belongs neither in the factory, nor in the salon, but functions best in the atelier, the workshop and the street, with apprentices and other artisans, making and trading things and knowledge. The artisan fashions neither the mass produced inventories of warehouses, nor the precious, unique objects that must only be seen in galleries, museums and auction houses. The objects and services that pass through her hands into the world are neither ubiquitous nor rare, nor do they seek value in ubiquity or rarity. They trade on the basis of their usage, within densely networked communities that the artisan is party to, not on the impetus of rival global speculations based on the volumes and volatility of stocks, or the price of a signature. As warehouses and auction houses proliferate, squeezing out the atelier and the workshop, the artisan loses her way. At the margins of an early industrial capitalism, the artisan seemingly transacts herself out of history, making way for the drone and the genius, for the polarities of drudgery and creativity, work and art.
“The artisan has neither the anonymity of the worker drone, not the hyperindividuated solipsism of the artist genius.�
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Immaterial Labour
Due to the emergence of a new economy of intellectual property based on the fruits of immaterial labour, the distinction between the roles of the worker and the artist in strictly functional terms is once again becoming difficult to sustain. To understand why this is so we need to take a cursory look at the new ways in which value is increasingly being produced in the world today. The combination of widespread cybernetic processes, increased economies of scale, agile management practices that adjust production to demand, and inventory status reports in a dispersed global assembly line, has made the mere manufacture of things a truly global fact. Cars, shoes, clothes, and medicines, or any commodity for that matter, are produced by more or less the same processes, anywhere. The manufacture of components, the research and design process, the final assembly and the marketing infrastructure no longer need to be circumscribed within one factory, or even one nation state or regional economic entity. The networked nature of contemporary industrial production frees the finished good from a fidelity to any one locatWion. This also results in a corollary condition - a multiplication of renditions, or editions (both authorised as well as counterfeit) of any product line at a global scale. Often, originals and their imitations are made in the same out-sourced sweatshop. The more things Wmultiply, the more they tend towards similarity, in form and appearance, if not in function. Thus, when capital becomes more successful than ever before at fashioning the material surface of the world after its own image, it also has more need than ever before for a sense of variety, a classificatory engine that could help order the mass that it generates, so that things do not cancel each other out by their generative equivalence. Hence the more things become the same, the more need there is for distinguishing signs, to enable their purchase. The importance given to the notions of ‘brand equity’, from which we get derivatives like ‘brand velocity’, ‘brand loyalty’ and a host of other usages prefixed by the term ‘brand’, is indicative of this reality. Today, the value of a good lies not only in what makes it a thing desirable enough to consume as a perishable capsule of (deferred) satisfaction. The value of a good lies especially in that aspect of it which makes it imperishable, eternally reproducible, and ubiquitously available. Information, which distils the imperishable, the reproducible, the ubiquitous in a condensed set of signs, is the true capital of this age. A commodity is no longer only an object that can be bought and sold; it is also that thing in it which can be read, interpreted and deciphered in such a way that every instance of decryption or encryption can also be bought and sold. Money lies in the meaning that lies hidden in a good. A good to eat must also be a good to think with, or to experiment with in a laboratory. This encryption of value, the codification and concentration of capital to its densest and most agile form, is what we understand to be intellectual property.
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How valuable is intellectual property? In attempting to find an answer to a question such as
know how). In particular, companies have taken
this, it is always instructive to look at the knowledge
advantage of more open trade opportunities by
base that capitalism produces to assess and
using the competitive advantage provided by brands
understand itself. In a recent paper titled ‘Evaluating
and technology to access distant markets. This
IP Rights: In Search of Brand Value in the New
is reflected in the growth in the ratio of market-
Economy’ a brand management consultant, Tony
capitalised value to book value of listed companies.
Samuel of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Intellectual
In the US, this ratio has increased from 1:1 to 5:1
Asset Management Group says: This change in the
over the last twenty years.‘In the UK, the ratio is
nature of competition and the dynamics of the new
similar, with less than 30% of the capitalised value
world economy have resulted in a change in the key
of FTSE 350 companies appearing on the balance
value drivers for a company from tangible assets
sheet. We would argue that the remaining 70% of
(such as plant and machinery) to intangible assets
unallocated value resides largely in intellectual
(such as brands, patents, copyright and know how).
property and certainly in intellectual assets.
In particular, companies have taken advantage of
Noticeably, the sectors with the highest ratio of
more open trade opportunities by copyright and
market capitalisation to book value are heavily reliant
on copyright (such as the media sector), patents (such as technology and pharmaceutical) and brands (such as pharmaceutical, food and drink, media and financial services).’The
paper
goes
on to quote Alan Shepard, sometime chairman of Grand Metropolitan plc, an international group specializing in branded food, drinks and retailing which merged with Guinness in 1997 to form Diageo, a corporation which today controls brands as diverse as Smirnoff and Burger King. Brands are the core of our business. We could, if we so wished, subcontract all of the production, distribution, sales and service functions and, provided that we retained ownership of our brands, we would continue to be successful and profitable. It is our brands that provide the profits of today and guarantee the profits of the future.’We have considered brands here at some length, because of the way in which brands populate our visual landscape. Were a born again landscape painter to try and represent a stretch of urban landscape,
it would be advisable for him or her to have privileged access to a smart intellectual property lawyer. But what is true of brands is equally true of other forms of intangible assets, or intellectual property, ranging from music, to images to software.The legal regime of intellectual property is in the process of encompassing as much as possible of all cultural transactions and production processes. All efforts to create or even understand art will have to come to terms, sooner or later, with the implications of this pervasive control, and intellectual property attorneys will no doubt exert considerable ‘curatorial’ influence as art events, museums and galleries clear artists projects, proposals and acquisitions as a matter of routine. These ‘attorney-curators’ will no doubt ensure that art institutions and events do not become liable for possible and potential ‘intellectual property violations’ that the artist, curator, theorist, writer or practitioner may or may not be aware of as being inscribed into their work.
“The worker of the twenty firstcentury is also a performer, a creator of value from meaning. She creates, researches and interprets, in the ordinary course of a working day..”
The worker as an artist
What are the implications of this scenario?
She creates, researches and interprets, in the
The worker of the twenty first century, who has
ordinary course of a working day to the order
to survive in a marker that places the utmost
that would merit her being considered an artist
value on the making of signs, finds that her
or a researcher, if by ‘artist’ or ‘researcher’ we
tools, her labour, her skills are all to do with
understand a person to be a figure who creates
varying degrees of creative, interpretative and
meaning or produces knowledge. Nothing illus-
performative agency. She makes brands shine,
trates this better than the condition of workers
she sculpts data, she mines meaning, she hews
in Information technology enabled industries
code.
like Call Centre and Remote Data Outsourcing,
The real global factory is a network of neural
which have paved the way for a new international
processes, no less material than the blast fur-
matrix of labour, and given a sudden performa-
naces and chimneys of manufacturing and in-
tive twist to the realities of what is called Glo-
dustrial capitalism. The worker of the twenty
balisation. In a recent installation, called A/S/L
first century is also a performer, a creator of val-
(Age/Sex/Location), we looked at the performa-
ue from meaning.
tive dimension in the lives ofThe callScene centre Magazine workers. 55
Her skin is darker than his, but her voice is trained to The call centre worker and her world
be whiter on the phone. Her night is his day. She is a
A call centre worker in the suburb of Delhi, the city
remote agent with a talent for impersonation in the IT
where we live, performs a Californian accent as she
enabled industry in India. She never gets paid extra for
pursues a loan defaulter in a poor Los Angeles neigh-
the long hours she puts in. He was laid off a few months
bourhood on the telephone. She threatens and cajoles
ago, and hasn’t been able to sort himself out. Which is
him. She scares him, gets underneath his skin, because
why she is calling him for the company she works for. He
she is scared that he won’t agree to pay, and that this
lives in a third world neighbourhood in a first world city,
will translate as a cut in her salary. Latitudes away from
she works in a free trade zone in a third world country.
him, she has a window open on her computer telling
Neither knows the other as anything other than as ‘case’
her about the weather in his backyard, his credit histo-
and ‘agent’. Elsewhere, we have written of the critical
ry, his employment record, his prison record.
necessity of this artifice to work (in terms of creating
sustain itself on an everyday basis, but an impression
and invoking a world, mimesis, projection and
of proximity that elides the actuality of distance) in
verisimilitude as well as the skilful deployment of a
order for a networked global capitalism to here, what
combination of reality and representation.
we would like to emphasise is the crucial role that a certain amount of ‘imaginative’ skill, and a combination of knowledge, command over language, articulateness, technological dexterity and performativity plays in making this form of labour productive and efficient on a global scale.The conversation between them is a denial of their realities and an assertion of many identities, each with their truths, all at once. Central to this kind of work is a process of imagining, understanding
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Marginalia Sometimes, the most significant heuristic openings are hidden away on the margins of the contemporary world. While the meta-narratives of war, globalisation, disasters, pandemics and technological spectacles grab headlines, the world may be changing in significant but unrecognised directions at the margins, like an incipient glacier inching its way across a forsaken moraine. These realities may have to with the simple facts of people being on the move, of the improvised mechanisms of survival that suddenly open out new possibilities, and the ways in which a few basic facts and conceptions to do with the everyday acts of coping with the world pass between continents. Here, margin is not so much a fact of location (as in something peripheral to an assumed centre) as it is a figure denoting a specific kind or degree of attentiveness. In this sense, a figure may be located at the very core of the reality that we are talking about, and still be marginal, because it does not cross a certain low-visibility, low-attention threshold, or because it is seen as being residual to the primary processes of reality. The call centre worker may be at the heart of the present global economy, but she is barely visible as an actor or an agent. In this sense, to be marginal is not necessary to be ‘far from the action’ or to be ‘remote’or in any way distant from the very hub of the world as we find it today.The Margin has its own image-field. And it is to this image-field that we turn to excavate or improvise a few resources for practice.A minor artisanal specialisation pertaining to medieval manuscript illumination was the drawing and inscription of what has been called ‘marginalia’ (Otwell 1995). ‘Marginalists’ (generally apprentices to scribes) would inscribe figures, often illustrating profane wisdom, popular proverbs, burlesque figures and fantastical or allegorical allusions that occasionally constructed a counter-narrative to the main body of the master text, while often acting as what was known as “exempla”: aids to conception and thought (and sometimes as inadvertent provocations for heretic meditations). It is here, in these marginalilluminations, that ordinary people - ploughmen, peasants, beggars, prostitutes and thieves would often make their appearances, constructing a parallel universe to that populated by kings, aristocrats, heroes, monsters, angels, prophets and divines. Much of our knowledge of what people looked like in the medieval world comes from the details that we find in manuscript marginalia. They index the real, even as they inscribe the nominally invisible. It would be interesting to think for instance of the incredible wealth of details of dress, attitude, social types and behaviours that we find in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, or Pierre Breughel as marginalia writ large. It is with some fidelity to this artisanalideal of using marginalia as exemplars that we would like to offer a small gallery of contemporary marginal figures. The Scene Magazine 59
The Weekly Comic by Manu Sharma
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L ive. l i f e. L uxur y