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April 08, 2006
The Simplicity Factor
There’s no mystery to it really. You find the best people, the most unique, that will get you the most mileage, with the biggest buzz surrounding them. It is useful, or elucidating to look at an agency as a curator of pop culture. We curate ‘art’ as something that can apply to a vast audience, by debuting it within advertising. Ad becomes another medium for the sponsorship of expression. If it’s working for a brand, somehow in the transmission art and brand molecules hybridize, and the resulting brand-organism grows, becoming stronger, more sophisticated and multi-faceted. The artists gets some money (though not enough) and exposure. I remember at first being amazed at how we do anything we want, and work with anyone we want without reverence or regard for any kind of cultural or intellectual border. Our very practice makes culture flat, and indistinct (at least to the practitioner).
It’s absurd. It’s a shortcut. And it’s not about design in any sense that kids think of it coming out of art school. It’s about selection, but when you can pick from within the creative community of the entire world, it’s a bit overwhelming. The value of work flattens because everything is brilliant. Everyone is talented. When you stare at only beauty for too long, everything ceases to be beautiful. An individual talent, or even a talented friend that you know personally seems tragically no longer special. You develop a heady attitude and are virtually impossible to be impressed. Not only are you curating, but overseeing, organizing--campaigning. You develop a false ego. Creating something by and for yourself can seem like a futile and ridiculous act. I’m 25. Will I have a holding interest in visual expression 10 years from now? Will I assume to know everything, even if having personally created nothing?
Posted by shane at April 8, 2006 01:26 AM