Infection? Roach? Burning Foreign National?
Thursday, February 12, 2009
(Recto)
(Verso)I picked this mock-passport programme for the Infecting the City festival up yesterday. I think Spier and Africa Centre is great, and that this Infecting the City Performance Festival shows a lot of potential for engaging in the city in a way that leaves CAPE in it's dust. Drama people just get shit done.
But, I really do question the neccessity of the graphic design. While many of the performances are dealing with xenophobia, it seems a little, um, strange to make an association between infections, roaches and Ernesto Nhamuave's tragic death. And for that matter to make the latter into an icon (this just shouldn't be iconic, shouldn't be co-opted into a brand). I tell you one thing, that man's murder had nothing to do with art, and using it to advertise that seems arrogant. All which would be gross but bearable if there wasn't a cockroach theme in the booklet too.
I think what this booklet is saying through it's design should really be examined. I understand the desire to be relevant and punchy, but it's not good publicity if a controversial image makes the target audience (me for eg) feel confused and nauseous. What do you think?
posted by Robert Sloon at 1:00 PM
13 Comments:
"I think what this booklet is saying through it's design should really be examined. I understand the desire to be relevant and punchy, but it's not good publicity if a controversial image makes the target audience (me for eg) feel confused and nauseous. What do you think?"
I think you are conservative.
Really? How so? Is conservative having a sense of responsibility to fellow humans?
Why shouldn't the target audience feel confused and nauseous? Do you use art + culture just as a means of entertainment and vanity?
I'm not talking about art and culture (although it's value beyond entertainment and vanity could be debated). Rather I'm talking about branding and marketing.
dan halter did a faux passport as booklet. why the questions now? his issues are as heart wrenching. what is the problem?
Ok geniuses lets take it from the top. Infection .. disease... immigrants... infection is foreign viruses making the host body sick... cockroaches are found where there is dirt and disease, hence their association with terms of insult for people regarded as vermin.. this pamphlet is promoting xenophobia. If it doesn't mean to, if it means to be challenging xenophobia, then the crassness of the design doesn't communicate this. Everything that is nauseating is not always nauseating in a challenging way, it can be nauseating because it's crass. Now do you get the point that Mr Sloon is trying to make?
I have to agree Sloon the branding is at best problematic. At worst it embodies typical representational violence (representational violence = when stupid visually illiterate people think they are doing a good thing for somebody but through their use of imagery the promulgate the very same issue they are trying to challenge)
you are so right. As soon as i read the program for ITC I wanted to go and club a few foreigners.
Its a similar case of comparing Black people to monkeys.
this is like everything else that spier do. it is your choice - do you really want to play with these people?
Fucking so with you, Sloonie: this is insensitive to the max. Reminds me of Rage Against the Machine's debut album cover: see Wiki reference below:
"The album's cover featured Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, burning himself to death in Saigon in 1963 in protest of the murder of Buddhists by Prime Minister Ngô Đình Diệm's regime"
Except, crucially, Thích Quảng Đức set himself on fire, using his own self-inflicted violent death to draw attention to a cause. Ernesto Nhamuave was, by contrast, an unwilling participant in his representation in the collective imagination, the victim of an attack of the most brutal order. To aestheticize his shocking death into a design element seems like the most extraordinary level of insensitivity possible, and highly irresponsible.
Again, this has to do with the politics of representation and double standards applied to these politics: could you imagine if a similar thing was done with Leigh Matthews, or with any other high-profile white crime victim? The outcry would be deafening.
Ernesto Nhamuave remained, for many people, anonymous, as black crime victimhood is generally reported very differently in the media than its white countepart: therein lies the seed of an abomnible train of thought that results in a design such as this occuring, presumably under the guise of raising consciousness.
"Again, this has to do with the politics of representation and double standards applied to these politics: could you imagine if a similar thing was done with Leigh Matthews, or with any other high-profile white crime victim? The outcry would be deafening."
Exackle!
hi chad
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