Before looking at the article, it is useful to consider the Situationist concept of Recuperation.
Debord in the Society
of the Spectacle said that official culture is a ‘rigged game’
‘where
conservative powers forbid subversive ideas to have direct access to the public
discourse.’
‘ Such ideas get first trivialized and
sterilized, and then they are safely incorporated back within mainstream
society, where they can be exploited to add new flavors to old dominant ideas.
This technique of the spectacle is sometimes called recuperation.
To survive, the spectacle must
maintain social control and effectively handle all threats to the social order.
More broadly, it may refer to the appropriation or co-opting of any subversive
works or ideas by mainstream media.
It is the opposite of détournement, in which
conventional ideas and images are reorganized and recontextualized with radical
intentions.’
(Quote about Recuperation from Wikipedia.)
This article is a good example of recuperation, as the
authors state at the beginning
“…we analyze a set of rhetorical practices employed by
street artists that not only reflect, but might also be used to shape,
commercial advertising…’
Street art and graffitti can be about subverting
consumer culture.
Dr D Sly
Fiat 1980s?
Adbusters
Absolute AA
Brandalism
The article suggests using the techniques of street
art and graffitti to reinvigorate advertising and sell more successfully to their
audience ‘appropriating street art’s authentic essence to revitalize their own
commerical efficacy.’
It was written by four professors of marketing at
American and Italian universities for the Journal of Advertising published by
the American Academy of Advertising in 2010.
It is aimed at professionals working in the
advertising industry and is written in academic language, based on a 3 year study with 20 artists across
Italy and the USA in person and through ‘netnography’ (study of websites?) and
on 60 ‘consumers’ – ie viewers of street art.
It offers as
analysis of the techniques of street art and suggest advertising can appropriate these techniques. It concludes ‘Street art can be
considered as an emerging template for commercial advertising’.
They claim to use ‘visual data’ as examples in the
article, unfortunately in the copy the pictures have reproduced poorly and are
unclear, which is ironic considering it is about the power, persuasiveness and
impact of visual images.
I found this article depressing, but in the end
concluded that advertising (capitalism) and graffitti (radicalism) will always coexist
and feed off each other in a loop.
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