Co-Branding

Above, French artist Ludo and his co-branding project, reviewed on the Huffington Post. As local writer Barbara Leung mentioned however, these have not been visible in central Paris. One of things so interesting about street art and its recent resurgence, is that it aims to reach a local community, but automatically becomes integral to the larger public sphere online. In the gesture of making the work public, everyone's take is validated.

In 2003, I curated an exhibition in a small part of Switzerland. Artist Ken Courtney created the publicity for the exhibition which said nothing about the exhibition except contact info at the bottom. The poster listed luxury fashion brands and Arabic words.

The poster uses status signifiers of Western culture. Dior, Chanel, Yves Saint-Laurent and other luxury brands, are used to promote the exhibition Eispavillon, even though they have nothing to do with the content of the exhibition. Courtney provokes a reconsideration of the familarity with luxury brands versus the unfamilarity with the second list and values of another culture, which in this case are sacred values, thus prompting the question: what are we worshipping?