why i want to be a man

... there's a post over at my friend rob's blog about the usual fucking gender stereotypes. i've already said quite a bit over the years on that blog about the marketing/capitalist attitude to women. i'm sure that everyone is sick of hearing about it.

good, in a way.

and just as i was about to press 'submit' on yet another long rant, i realised that i didn't want to vomit all over his blog again.

but i did have a fair amount to say, so here's what i would have said over there, here:



rob, i know that it's your blog, but bring on the can of worms. seriously. you guys have probably more power to make changes about the place of women in the world than anyone else i know. and if we have to have ugly, crawling arguments on the state of women and their continued disadvantage, so that maybe one day, some marketing manager from a global corporate company you guys keep decides that they're going to go with a different tack that can of worms will have been fucking worth it.


i'm with peggy on it being fuckloads easier being a man because i'm sick and fucking tired of piping up every fucking time the age-old gender assumptions, or disadvantage come up. i'm sick of reminding everyone that women exist too and, wow, we're human beings too.


i know that every time i do, a guy who is sick of the stereotypes also benefits, but fuckin' hell - how about you blokes chime in some time.  


all you guys feeling boxed in by having to put up with the big tits blond bombshell "sex sells" line pipe up. 


or how about, if you're feeling claustrophobic because you're likely to be paid more, or promoted earlier than the ladies in your field, or that they're more likely to be intimidated and harassed by their male superiors, go right ahead, talk to HR on their behalf -  i'm sure they won't mind.


or fuck, if you feel like it's getting a bit hot under the collar because 2 out of ever 3 women you know have been raped or sexually abused by a man they know - jesus - don't let me stop you shouting about it. i mean, it must really fuck you off, right?






it's not just the boring, insulting stereotypes as mothers, homemakers and neurotic latte-sipping lovers of the colour pink that is wrong with this kind of marketing. it's that it's all part of  making women feel bad about themselves as women that really fucks me off.




and andy, i love you, but 'tell that to the man who can't get access to his kids'? really? you have GOT to be joking.

geek week 6

well, today is the end of the official transition stage. it may explain the weird level of sadness or something i've been feeling. either that, or the lack of exercise, sleep or regular meals.


this week, another short one thank to the aus v ger game queen's birthday holiday, has been quite frenetic and frustrating. i spent most of the week juggling shitty tech difficulties: on hold with adobe and their appalling tech support, trawling tech forums, drawing wiring diagrams and cloud diagrams to work out the best way to run the network, upgrade the modem and enable remote access. today, thankfully, most of that has been sorted (save the final ethernet cable party later).



the first stages of our new website framework has been developed and we're now setting about uploading easy content, figuring out the best way to arrange dynamic content and generally getting our hands dirty movin' stuff around. it's so exciting to have it all in so early.



and then last night i found myself feeling quite despondent about what i'm doing here, thanks to a line by stan johnson - a blogger and creative heavyweight whose conviction and attitude i admire.


in his blog, he talked about uniqlo as a stellar brand that were really at the forefront of really using intergrated digital content/technology within their identity. the punch-line was "Because I'm sick and tired of so called digital creatives who seem to think that designing a bloody website is a big digital idea.".



most of my time as a geek is helping build the kids here a new website. it's not wildly innovative, in terms of digital output.
it is practical, necessary and long-overdue. but it's not really a big digital idea. and part of me feels guilty about that. especially as artists have a long history of being innovative and at the forefront of digital exploration and excitement.

and yet, what is the point of innovation, if your basic services don't work?

i do think that arts organisations will benefit greatly from access to ebooks - imagine artist catalogues available on ipad/iphone? and the relationship between mobile technology and spatial arts practice is also interesting.

but this current website does not accurately reflect the depth of artistic innovation that happens in this organisation. it doesn't support arts practice by doing what a website should, at its basic level, which is communicate with the audience.

so, the innovation in this program is to get the basic pragmatic stuff done, share it and leave resources and possibilities for other exciting outcomes. teach a man a fish...

takin' the piss.

ok, two 'this video is great' posts in a week. can you tell i have a deadline handy?

but really, this is great.

it's the recent spoof of this great ad. not often a spoof can come off as well as the first (except maybe all those gorilla piss-takes), but this is awesome.



thanks mr m.

this one's for the media buyers...

i know that this is probably old news now, but tonight i found about about the Seven Network's dumping of the fully-paid GetUp ad for Tibet, intended to have aired during the Opening Ceremony telecast.

Jesus! This throws up so many icky questions about freedom, the role of the media, advertising and the currency of money, as opposed to morals, etc. I know that Seven aren't exactly pillars of moral/ethical standing - hell, they let Naomi Robson work there for far to long, but, given that money seems to be the new democracy, surely a string of paid ads is enough to get a guernsey. Obviously not.

I don't always believe in 'no such things as bad publicity', but i'm quite enjoying the fact that the farse of the Seven booking system/content team/censorship board (whatever they call themselves these days) seems to have thrown the issue open wider than it could ever have, should the ad have run. Well done Seven. Stokesy, I hope you're happy with that one.

(image from the GetUp! site. which you should visit and find out more about the whole campaign)

having my cake and eating it too

regular readers will know about my crazy roller-coaster ride with employment in the last 12 months:

• getting a job as a kitchen hand in london after a PSFK conference by just walking in off the street. only to walk out by not turning up one day - stressed out and seriously ill.

• rejected from a job in a high-volume copy shop/print room after the third interview, because i wasn't M-----t material. (ie, I wasn't from either financial or legal fraternity aristocracy.)

• working over summer at the sydney myer music bowl and getting to see jon bon jovi, cypress hill and kanye west!

• landing a fab job at a craft and design organisation, doing what i love, then having it become something that i didn't love anymore.

• giving up full-time employment to go back to uni, letting go of a 'real' salary in return for some 'real' time whilst getting a job in an international aid organisation, within the design and architecture fields.

• and the clincher for 'oh my god, can my work life get any more operatic?', i went looking for a bit of contract work, just to get a bit of money happening in between gigs. the lovely ms g at the recruitment agency rang me and told me about this short term thing which was right up my alley: arts, culture, environmental/social issues and advertising (ok, so i'm not quite a cliche, yet). i went along, thinking it would be just a nice place to spend some time, earn some money.

two weeks later, it's a life-long love affair and we're vowing to stay in touch. all of them were on my wavelength - we talked structure, the value of creative thinking when developing strategy, the importance of sticking to your principles and the art of staying true to who you are as a person and as a company (made up of people). bliss, i tell you, bliss!

that is the bit about life that i find absolutely amazing and gets me EVERY time - you find it when you're not looking. in fact, hanging out with the kids at midnightsky* not only restored my faith in the gloriousness of life's twists and turns, but restored my faith in the power of authenticity, self-belief and well-aimed business strategy. i have also learned a whole lot about value from these guys. namely that i undervalue myself ALL THE TIME! i knew this already, but this time i saw it with fresh eyes and saw, in practice, that when you value yourself highly and know thyself absolutely (both financially and emotionally), it is reciprocated.

i know, this sounds like something Agony Aunt would love, but it has been quite a profound experience and one that i think marks the passing of age, actually. i don't know if i could have had this kind of experience 5 or 10 years ago (fortunately, or unfortunately).

perhaps this was just a long-winded story filed under 'to thine own self be true'.


* actually, for any of you strategy/planning peeps out there, the midnight sky crew are looking for team mates. go and talk to them, they're amazing.

wish you were here

from the guardian art & architecture blog




Next on the agenda is Santiago Sierra's 4000 Black Posters: a blackout of all "available" advertising hoardings around Shoreditch and Brick Lane. The gallery remains tight-lipped about whether the sites have been negotiated for use, begging the question exactly what constitutes activism in the post-Banksy era. In this case though it doesn't really matter: Sierra's act of silencing quotidian information is designed to highlight the exploitative power of signage, revealing how little of the public realm is ours to use. The fact that the artist may have had to buy the right to freedom of expression merely makes the gesture more poignant.

Who can say what proportion of the public will become perplexed enough by such works to ask questions about the development of our civic spaces and our rights within them. But as reminders, however implicit, of what social protest has and continues to mean in London, they offer critically engaging perspectives from which to start.

Sierra is brilliant and I wish I could be there to see it. Especially 'cos loads of my ad peeps are in EC1. I'd love to see W&K London black out their windows in sympathy.. or hypocrisy... or something.

advertising is like porn. Verses 1 - 8

I'm loving Blank is like Blank at the moment. Justin's "analogies to live by" are quietly amusing and wry as fuck. I'm totally loving the Advertising is like Porn series that's going on there at the moment...

• Advertising is like porn (1):
Only the people who create it are delusional enough to call it art.

• Advertising is like porn (2):
They both have weird self-congratulatory award shows.

• Advertising is like porn (3):
It’s hard to transition out of.

• Advertising is like porn (4):
The Internet took it to a whole new level.

• Advertising is like porn (5):
You fast-forward through the boring stuff.

• Advertising is like porn (6):
The same concepts are endlessly recycled.

• Advertising is like porn (7):
It creates careers for art-school dropouts.

• Advertising is like porn (8):
Working in the industry will affect your family life at some point.



I'm thinking of making an accompanying Art is like Porn series, a tribute to Mr Henson, of course.

fuck this vain circle jerk of a magazine.

i hate vice mag and i hate vice mag kids. they probably all hate me too. that's fine.

i do, however, love this ad in this month's mag.

[click to enlarge]

bring it on...

when appropriation becomes stealing

otherwise known as: one of the reasons i'm not a creative director in advertising.

there has been a lot of discussion online recently about the new ad by a well-known english advertising agency, for a large asian global electronics company and i'm going to add my two cents worth. just because, you know, i'm bored.

actually, i decided to write about it today because i met the two artists whose work it's "heavily borrowed" from whilst they were slaving away installing their own gallery show. i asked them whether permission was granted to use their motif and concept of coloured bunnies escaping in a de-saturated city, in such an obvious way. unsurprisingly, the answer was no.

the thing is, this isn't the first time that advertising has 'borrowed' ideas, motifs, designs and concepts from visual artists for the purpose of brand recognition or communication and i have to say it's an area that i'm passionate and biased about. in fact, if you're looking for an impartial viewpoint on it, i suggest you read something like campaign.. creative review... horse and hound.

i've always been interested in advertising. my uncle worked on production for tvcs when i was a kid, my mum and i always used to discuss well made ads when i was growing up, i did essays on the dangers of advertising's power in high school, and now i spend way too much time fucking around on blogs written by people in advertising. but it shits me to tears when creatives like the ones on the recent play-doh bunnies ad, the coloured balls ad (same culprit), the japanese car company cog ad (by another well-respected agency) and others like them, completely rip off ideas executed by well-known contemporary visual artists for the purpose of product placement, without due credit.

creatives? greatest fucking misnomer on the face of the planet.

hell, if the idea is so great and you can't possibly come up with another one, despite being paid truckloads to be 'creative', then get permission and/or credit the artist for fucks sake. just like if you use a song by a musical artist, you have to get permission or at least credit the songwriter and at least pay a hefty chunk of royalty.

i can tell you that 9 times out of 10, the artwork would not have been created to be associated with a commercial, profit-driven branding positioning. and once it has been associated with something as facile as a commodity, FMCG, consumer strategy (or whatever ad wank you wanna go with), then the whole concept of the work is lost to the bottom line and the original execution relegated to 'coulda been..' or 'in preparation for..'

and there's the possibility that the artist will be known as 'oh, you're the guys who originally thought of the moving the car parts for Brand So and So', or 'you're the guys who originally did the Brand XYZ bunnies". how's that for a typecast.

and, having said all that, it does hightlight that old 'fine line' again.

within the visual arts, artists borrow from other artists all the time and either incorporate it into the work - like early Richard Hamilton, or recreate work in a different context, or reference (appropriation) - like Yasumasa Morimura. provided that there is enough of a difference from the original work so that it's not a direct rip-off, doesn't solely rely on the original outstanding motif, or that it doesn't adversely affect the artists' reputation, it is considered acceptable*. both within the industry and in a court of law (well, at least in this country).

so what is that fine line between acceptable appropriation, and downright stealing? is it because, even in an era which avoids talking about the 'romance' or 'soul' of art, we still like our arts to have a sense of separation from the grit of our daily (commerce-based) life? are we back to square one on the whole 'difference between art and advertising' gameboard again? am i just getting way to hepped up about this? do i sound like carrie bradshaw from sex and the city, ending my post with all these unanswered questions? god, i hope so.



*see Arts Law and the Copyright Council of Australia for detailed IP and moral rights legislation in Australia.