Category: Creativity
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The Comedian’s Irony: A Banana, gaffer tape, and the Cryptocurrency scam
In the annals of art history, Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian – a banana duct-taped to a wall – has always been an utter joke had tongue-in-cheek appeal. Its conceptual premise is simple yet vacuous: playfully critiquing the notion of art as an object of value. So, on 21st Nov, in the…
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The Big Breakfast: the first meal of Cool Britainnia
Yes I know, I’ve perhaps been reading too much of Mark Fisher of late, but I really do think he was on to something. Perhaps it’s because I’m a child of the 90s, maybe because my first ever proper job gave me a front row seat in the ever-accelerating juggernaut…
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The (not so) original sin of Apple’s ‘Crush’ Advert
Apple have a bit of history with controversial commercials. The infamous 1984 cinematic ad directed by Ridley Scott won a sack full of awards, but many commentators highlighted how it signalled the birth of a kind of consumerist tech capitalism in which products’ branding and image were far more important…
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Escaping 1997
Have you noticed that we’re stuck in the year of 1997? If you call recall that time, it was the apotheosis of neoliberalism with Bill Clinton securing a second term as US president and Tony Blair blustered into Number 10 riding the coattails of Cool Britannia culture and associated celebrities.…
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Juxtaposition in the Capitalocene
One of the fundamental epistemological tenants of the Capitalocene can be analysed via a rather old-fashioned motif: a geographical, specifically, a scalar narrative. That is because our current conjuncture compels us to confront a stark and often discordant juxtaposition: one that chaotically zooms from the cosmological, the planetary, the national,…
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Advertising, Desire and post-capitalism
Kylie Jenner’s infamous Pepsi ad, that was pulled after a public outcry that it trivialised the Black Live Matter protests in 2017 Advertising shits in your head. It permeates every aspect of our waking (and perhaps soon, non-waking) lives, manipulating our innermost desires, and shaping our perception of what we…
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NFTs are killing creativity
The art market has always faced accusations of being over-inflated and reducing the subversive, political, ethical and perhaps spiritual potency of art in favour of pure profit. Banksy’s ‘Girl With Balloon’ piece pictured above – where a stunt to shred an artwork didn’t go to plan and as a result,…
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Jurassic World and Personal Technology
Jurassic World is a film about dinosaurs isn’t it? Well yes and no. Like all good films, the subtexts run rather differently to what we actually see on screen. So while we see giant dinosaurs taking chunks out of each other, we’re also witnessing a rather subtle commentary on social relations,…
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We have always been Creative
Just a quick note to say that over on the OpenDemocracy website, they very gracefully decided to publish my response to this piece by Adam Lent for the RSA. The headline argument is that the last 250 years has not seen a sudden surge in the creative spirit, it has seen the appropriation of…
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