Disaster(ous) Logo(s)

Rejects?

I-mage

Inauthentic Hybridity – is that all we can hope for?

“In a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles, to speak through masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum.”

– Marjorie Perloff, Radical Artifice

And with this inspiring remark in mind, I try to motivate myself to carry on designing…

Warm Up

NOTES: Fire as:

• recombinant force (in color theory, of primary colors red and yellow) – number 3
• an alchemical emblem because in its destructiveness, it also encapsulates the potential for re-generation and the resolution of conflict [see post about liquid/ Greek fire]
• mythical connotations: Prometheus as both the bearer and thief of fire
• The shape of fire as a triangle? the triad – religious connotations [Holy Trinity, conservatism, traditional & backward values and belief system].
• Triangle as a “metaphor for transforming destiny into choice, or repression into freedom” (Macnab, 95). This aspect of the fire could be compared with the energy movement of anarchy and/ or younger generations (at least the specific kind covered in this blog).
• But also: the fire’s energy movement as sprawling out of control, also manifest in the branching out of the distorted hexagonal heptagonal polygonal (?) shape of the crack in the wall.

Take One:

Integrating smaller concepts to a larger whole.

Take Two:

Adding value by cutting out distraction (e.g. easier to remember and reproduce)

Using paradox to discover unexpected connections –> Macnab asserts that the paradox allows for the possibility of resolution (in this case, also visually) between opposites.

Take Three:

Bansky

“Bansky” is a notorious British underground artist who uses graffiti (among other art forms) in a subversive way to deconstruct pervasive symbols and thus stimulate cultural and political commentary. Bansky’s identity remains a well-publicized mystery, along with a validated explanation of his works and his intent.  Bansky’s works can be regarded as creative destruction, that is, defacement of public property fior a higher/ self-serving purpose:  to introduce “alternative” public discourse through art.  Conversely, the canvals of his work (usually the walls of buildings in crowded public areas) can be seen as destructive creation because the creation of something new inevitably leads to the repurposing of the canvas itself through the newly-created artwork.  Bansky’s operating strategies  – usually a “design and dash” method – seem to follow similar energy patterns as those of anarchist activities (at least specifically speaking, i.e. during the Greek riots).  Moreover, Bansky-as-myth and rioters-as-symbol epitomize a state of liminality in the sense that they cannot be placed within a consistent framework. Their symbolic and mythical status oscillates between anarchy [[social marginality]] and organized political movement [[within the cultural/ capitalist logic]].

Flower Thrower

Envisioning the image as  “a complex configuration of visual, verbal, and aural signs….it is manifest not only in films but in all kinds of media texts” (Richard Dyer).  To me, the hardest element to weave into a logo is the aural aspect.

“The time has come to bring back more symbolic marks whenever possible and appropriate because we’ve been over-saturated with abstractions… the best communication is something recognizable that people can relate to”

--Steff Geissbuhler

TRIGGER: Finding inspiration in nature, man-made constructs, and art as fusion of the man-made, the natural, and the in-between (the digital?)

Without consideration, without pity, without shame
they have built great and high walls around me.

And now I sit here and despair.
I think of nothing else: this fate gnaws at my mind;

for I had many things to do outside.
Ah why did I not pay attention when they were building the walls.

But I never heard any noise or sound of builders.
Imperceptibly they shut me from the outside world.

“Walls” – Constantine P. Cavafy (1896)

Bansky decorations on the Palestinian side of the controversial West Bank barrier in Israel (9 in total)

Resting on Laurels

STATEMENT

On Saturday night, the Greek police assassinated a 15 year old student.

His assassination was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was the continuation of a coordinated action, by state terrorism and the Golden Dawn, which aimed at university and high school students (with the private universities first), at migrants that continue to be persecuted for being born with the wrong colour, at the employees that must work to death without compensation.

The government of cover-ups with its praetors, having burnt the forests last summer, is responsible for all major cities burning now, too. It protected financial criminals, all those involved in the mobile phone interceptions scandal, those looting the employees’ insurance funds, those kidnapping migrants, those who protected the banks and the monasteries that steal from the ordinary people.

We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society.

There are no excuses, yet they once again try to use conspiracy theories to calm spirits down.

The rage that had accumulated had to be expressed and should not, by any means, end.

Throughout the world we are making headlines, it was about time that people uprise everywhere.

The generation of the poor, the unemployed, the partially employed, the homeless, the migrants, the youth, is the generation that will smash every display window and will wake up the obedient citizens from their sleep of the ephemeral American dream.

Don’t watch the news, consciousness is born in the streets

When the youth is murdered, the old people should not sleep

Goodbye Alexandros, may your blood be the last of an innocent to run

No Comment (for now)

“… it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

- Shakespeare, Macbeth (Act V, Scene V)

Naked Landscapes

I showed the Spencer Tunick documentary Naked States to my students once. I got no response, just embarrassed looks and no eye contact. That in itself was a response. Affect renders us [speechless].

walls

Mythical or Hyperbolic Cancer: Repetition with a difference:

” … here is a cell that doesn’t hear the command, that develops lawlessly, in a way that could be called anarchic.” More so, this cancer “destroys the very idea of a program, blurring the exchange and the message…

Cancer, from this perspective, is a political phenomenon*, one of the rare ways to dislocate the system, to disarticulate, through proliferation and disorder, the universal programming and signifying power…

Something we cannot understand maliciously neutralizes the authority of a master knowledge.” (Blanchot).

* If mythical cancer is a political phenomenon, then Bathes’ assertion that “myth is depoliticized speech” is flawed (even though he offers a broader understanding of the word “political”,  as the network of human relations and their influence in creating the social order).  Ding, Ding, Ding! >>  Round 1 winner: Blanchot >>

Anarchy NOW

Anarchists, like the disaster, are situated outside the experience economy. Like some aspects of the disaster, anarchists place themselves inside the experience economy only to destroy it.  The fact that anarchists remain powerless against (and within) the experience economy makes them more determined to find their power outside of it. However, they usually end up becoming part of the experience economy by their very opposition towards it.

Anarchists = otherness. Their/ Our obsession with others.

Example & Application: the Greek Riots

The defacement of public property in large Greek cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki has impacted tourism, a contributing aspect to the experience economy >>> The anarchists have been integrated into the experience economy model through the commodification of their acts: for instance, millions of photographs of the riots and of public property damages have been circulating around the world.  The riots and their aftermath turned the world’s attention to Greece and Europe in general. The apocalyptic overtones attached to the disaster by various global media outlets have placed Greece at the center of it all, only to ultimately decentralize it.

Profit/ credit= e.g. international exposure, profile, capital  ## #

Debit= e.g. impact on: tourism, government, education labor…

Corporate media tend to ignore anarchists, or try to minimize their impact.  The fact that corporate media outlets have been forced to detail the anarchist involvement in these and other struggles in Greece attests to the significance of anarchist activity. Leftists attempt to portray the events in Greece as a general uprising of  “the people,” and this is not inaccurate, since countless “normal” people have participated. However, from the vantage point of anarchist supporters and those intimidated by anarchists, it is the anarchists that have instigated the riots and have remained the most influential force within the “movement”.

From one perspective, the anarchists – and “anarchy” in its abstract form – function as a political scapegoat. A scapegoat that is used to let the government almost entirely off the hook. A scapegoat that does not point to what is wrong with the System, but serves the purpose [to some] of placing blame outside the system and displacing the flaws outside the system.

If only it were so simple.

Democracy is dead. Long live democracy.