BRANDS AND PRODUCTS: HOW THE OBJECT BE/COME SUBJECTS

By Halszka Kostecka (Fashion Brand Management student, October 2011)

Teacher: Danilo Venturi

On 2007 Zevs, French street artist, created on the wall of Emporio Armani store in Hong Kong a liquidated version of Chanel logo as he did in different cities with other omnipresent trademarks including Coca Cola, Apple, Nike or LV.  A simple gesture of pouring an excessive amount of the paint caused logo to dissolve in front of the viewers. As many brands nowadays are putting huge efforts into increasing the instant brand recognition and creation of quick connection with the brand without necessity of explaining its values, history or hidden-within archetypes, the artwork of Zevs is posing some molesting questions: if all the content of the brand is communicated by logo what is left when the logo itself is washed away? How brand can be recognized without its most visible part? Zevs is going step further with his work. Photos of liquidated logos are currently saved on gzzglz.com, a precise copy of the prominent search website google.com.  There, under the bookmark “copy”, he is showing a logolized Chanel t-shirt fashionably trimmed with thin chains, or an Apple advertising campaign with a colorful dripping paint form the new generation of iPods, all looking as inspired by his works. Thus he is creating the situation in which copied brands are becoming copyists, shadows of the shadow, stripped of values and detached from the original content.

However, if the brand is something more than its logo, if it can speak to the customer and interact with him, it will be still recognized even if the logo is distorted or faded away as in my beloved t-shirt form the first rock concert I have ever attended. Few brands are exploring now new ways to communicate with people. Clunky Design for example is a group of Japanese designers that created Plaring: plastic rings to be assembled by the customer at home. The concept is to allow customers to re-assemble and re-create shapes and colors of the ring according to mood of a specific moment. Momentarily mass-produced plastic parts are turning into personal ring and the act of re-creation is becoming the act of recreation, of fun and play. The object is gaining in emotional depth because connected with a specific moment in life or simply because of such an effort put into choosing patterns and assembling. The consumer is shifting into the position of creator and by attaching emotions to the product, he or she is giving it a personality, right like the protagonists of “Pleasantville” movie (1998) who were transferred into a black and white sitcom world and turned it into a color one by awaking human passions in the inhabitants of a virtual Pleasantville city. Clunky Design team claims that they are “putting the best effort on adding to the incompletion, filling the missing and producing higher value”. When the ring is assembled by the customer at home, what was incomplete becomes finished, the C from Clunky becomes perfect O, and the circle closes. The re-assembling method by Clunky Design was applied by Bjork on her latest album Biophilia, which is consisted of iPad apps that allowoing the listener to interact with themes of the songs or to create new versions of them.

The boundaries between real and virtual, true and fake artist and viewer are becoming more and more blurred. While in Polish bookstores we can find the book written by character of popular TV series “Na Wspolnej”, the Japanese company Crypton Future Media created virtual a singer, Hatsune Miku, who is now giving live concerts to her fans by projections. Attending the concert where everyone is united under the same purpose is triggering the most primitive sense of belonging, being part of tribe, and Hatsune’s tribe is not an exception. Fans of Hatsune Miku re-create her character during the cosplay convents, sew or customize her outfit just to wear it during one night event, and as one may say that imitation is an ultimate sign of admiration, in this very moment when their personalities are overlapping with hers even a stronger bond is created. The young virtual singer will never disappoint her fans by no-show, never consider a change of agent or ask for a rise.  But most importantly she is eternally sixteen. After thirty years, always present, updated but still the same, she can be both a sweet reminiscence of youth for the parents and a current idol for their kids.

As Hatsune Miku is openly artificial being with true identity of singer, in 2010 the world started to talk about a real person who is now widely considered to be an artificial artist. 2010 was the year of release of “Exit Through The Gift Shop”, movie by English street art Banksy, who presented in it the story of Thierry Guetta, a man who became obsessed with street artists and became recognized as one by copying styles of others, through an immense publicity. The riddle, if Mr. Brainwash is in fact the alter ego of Banksy who self-copied and re-created himself in order to make fool of people that buy his artworks for huge amounts of money, denying thus everything Banksy stands for (which could explain the nickname Mr. Brainwash), or a true artist with bad publicity, is again leading to the question: how a brand can be distinguished from others and maintain its identity.

If the artificial (virtual) is real and real is artificial, some artists are trying to escape this trap by further blurring the boundaries, by detaching the words artificial or fake from its original meaning of “not genuine or authentic”. On April 2010, in one of the busiest districts of Tokyo, Shibuya emerged a new fashion spot called “Fake Tokyo”. Fake Tokyo consists of a fashion gallery, fashion showroom and shops with underground and high-end brands, all aimed to create a fashion focused space for dialoging with customers. KAWS, artist from USA created the Original Fake – brand of collectable toys that base on mass-production models. From few seasons the artist is also presenting clothing, some of which done in collaboration with fashion brands such as BAPE. Again we are facing the situation in which real artist produces original pieces of arts based on already existing products (such as Levi’s for garment or Micky Mouse for toys) and perversely calls it “original”. Still, looking at his art we are always able to recognize his inspiration, the brand he worked with, even if there is no more logo. So maybe that is the answer to the question of how to make the brand eternal – let customers take part into [re]creation act. CUUSOO, a design company based in Tokyo, has a page dedicated to its customers’ voice, as they can express their whishes about products they would like to see in Muji stores. The page provides also the information about the final result of product-embodying a desire expressed via e-mail. As an outcome the goods in Muji might be mass-produced, but they are still individual and personalized. The object is subject.

Sources:

1. ZEVS ARTWORK               http://gzzglz.com/
2. Clunky Design                    http://www.clunkydesign.com/profile.html
3. Crypton Future Media        http://www.crypton.co.jp/
4. Hastsune Miku live             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI
5. Fake Tokyo                          http://www.faketokyo.com/
6. Original Fake                       http://www.original-fake.com/
7. KAWS                                   http://www.kawsone.com/shop ,
8. CUUSOO and MUJI collaboration          http://www.cuusoo.com/muji/