The burning date has moved, for various reasons, to 17th September 2006. I can't reveal the location yet, but all I will say is that if you are in London, and want to come and support/ heckle me at the ceremony, you are most welcome. I'm also inviting people to declare their own brand amnesties by throwing something of their own to the flames.
For people of a more opportunistic state of mind, there should be ample opportunity for you to steal some of my gear from the pile before it's thrown on.
London Fashion week starts the next day, by a not entirely wild coincidence.
I thank you.
4 Comments:
Bagsy the Lacoste jacket from below!
mm, damn interesting
Maybe I've missed it but I'm still unsure what you mean by 'a brand'... as in, to make sense of just what you plan to burn, you must have some kind of definition of something that belongs to the category of 'branded' and something that is not a member of the category. So what is your definition? The reason I ask is that how you define it/them sets some practical limits on the task at hand (and more on this below)
Now, I'm no expert on anything like the history of brands (and that is an intersting question, anyway, when and how did the term 'brand' emerge, how has its meaning, definition, practical use shifted over time, between societies, cultures?) or an expert on contemporary (branded) culture. I think it's an interesting question to think about the practical limits of a defintion of a brand.
If we take for example Richard Sennett's argument in (his great book) The Fall of Public Man, that the rise of the city - due to it's constantly shifting population - meant that the old symbols (and I'm not sure whether he uses the terms brand, identity, symbols) of status - a specific style of dress, colour of outfit, insignia, etc which placed you as belonging to a specific trade, guild or other class/social group where rendered meaningless. This old insignia could no longer be trusted, as in part, many people where strangers and you could not know, at a glance, the veracity of them. For him, we lost an element of trust, and alonside this we began to play more with our (visual) brand.
And to take this ever further (into my ever more pompous questions) could we argue - as some radical versions of queer theory do - that sexuality is now a brand, or is it that for some, sexuality becomes a brand at certain moments, in certain contexts? And I'm thinking here of how some people have pushed Judith Butler's idea of performativity of gender roles towards rethinking sexuality. And on that count, is gender, in and of itself a brand? And how about space? Clearly, spaces can and do become branded - and this can range from a club night as a brand, to a club night being sponsored by another brand, to an area of a city, or a city, or country as a brand?
Also, is something only a brand in and through an act of recognition on the part of another (or the person who owns or inhabits the brand?) or is something essentially branded irrespective of the context, as in, a brand has an essence free of time, space, society and culture? And can something be both branded and not branded at the same time, or is it that at some moments, contexts or times, that a brand is made relevant, made accountable, made available?
Mm ... maybe my ramberlings are slightly of topic ... I don't know ... but my basic question is this ... what is a brand?
Yeah, maybe you should keep your 'ramberlings' to yourself. And please proof-read your convoluted and pretentious crap before you post it. And feel free to read the previous posts before you do that.
In need of proof-reading – definitely.
Convoluted and pretentious – definitely.
Crap – we’ll have to agree to differ.
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