Immediate
My thoughts immediately cast back to the first couple of weeks of lockdown.
The sudden snap of change.
Without movement
No human sound
Palpable silence
Deafening quiet
Fear, anxiety.
Birdsong unheard came forth
Every tiny whisper of each creature suddenly loud
and the sea boomed in the distance.
We looked for connections and a place to hold, a crag to hook a finger into. To carry the weight of it all. There were moments where all I could do was put hand in soil. Dig, dig the earth. Plants the seeds for the future days, planning ahead. Mending, invisible darning became worthy and welcome with the time to do it.
My head then turned to wartime, of making do with less. "Make do and mend" "Your country needs you". A time where we were all united under a common threat and a need for communities to pull together.
Due to enforced lockdown we were made to stop. This forced us to look around, evaluate our position, we had to help and care for our elders, be aware of our communities. Withdrawal from consumerism focused our minds on local economies. Less material wealth and more wellbeing.
From this thinking came propoganda posters and the typography of the 1940s wartime. The use of illustration, typography to unify the nation, to communicate the common mission. In an age where we are ruled by sociopathic, narcisistic leader; with the rise of the hard right wing movement and the patriarchal backlash from #metoo, what followed next was the work of Shepard Fairey, who's work utilises wartime propoganda illustration with overtly political call to arms.
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"MANUFACTURING QUALITY DISSENT SINCE 1989
The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in Phenomenology. Heidegger describes Phenomenology as “the process of letting things manifest themselves.'"Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by abstract observation."
Phenomenology as Heidigger describes is "a way of encountering something" (Heidegger 2009) By utilising phenomenological thought Fairey is presenting alternative ideas using to the public space that aim to disrupt mainstream political thinking and to breed peaceful dissent. "Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view." (Stanford 2013) Fairey's initial Obey sticker has gained momentum as a symbol for rebellious outside thinking and asks that the participant looks directly at themselves... "(it) only exists to cause people to react, to contemplate and search for meaning in the sticker" (Fairey 2020). Fairey's work exists to bring about ownership of ideas, of a personal responsibility to understand the systems they live in, to question the status quo.
The Demagogue poster is more blatant in its approach; the tyrant that represents the growing right wing movement that threatens our way of life. The leader that excites audiences by enflaming prejudicial thinking, without entertaining meaningful discussion into the actual issues. It is undermining the work that has been done since wartime. Franz's Ferdinand name is directly linked as a reminder of the start of WW11.
Faireys work encapsulates my deep seated fears for where humanity is heading and calls us to make change. BLM, Covid, environment, Brexit. We are in such tumultuous times. We unleash wars, we turn in ourselves and yet herald ourselves as something exceptional. This thought experiment passage brings out in me frustrations, anger but more than anything utter helplessness.The anxiety in the country is palpable. I am anxious. The lockdown heightened this anxiety but also made us all stop, embrace the silence and make positive changes in our behaviours. So is humanity an error?
The response to Covid19 saw a lot of artists draw inspiration from the wartime propoganda posters. These are useful tools for getting a message across, direct visual language, but aligning them with the style of WW11 posters automates a sense of duty, a call to arms, your responsibility to respond to take part. The experience of WW11 so engrained in our cultural subconscious, we are reminded of the sacrifice and the community pulling together all the time and these propaganda posters are integral to that consciousness.
These images remind me of the good again in humanity. I am reminded that humanity is also kind and compassionate, that of all the Demagogue's ruling our countries that humanity will still pull together and work together.
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