You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Advertising’ tag.
THE BACKGROUND
In one of modern politics’ most outrageous adoptions of Doublespeak, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – in 2004 – renamed the California Department of Corrections the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.* You can see videos – here and here and here – of the press conference announcing not only a change in name, but a supposed change in the management philosophy of the CDCr.
At that time, legal challenges were being made over the adequacy of healthcare. Following the 2004 criticisms and despite the 2004 promises, consistent constitutional healthcare was not provided to the prison population of California.
The CDCr failed to deliver on both medical care and meaningful rehabilitation. To prove the emptiness of the rhetoric we can look to John Gramlich’s report for the PEW Center’s Stateline last month. Gramlich made the point, that shortly after Schwarzenegger’s rebranding the “administration cut funding for prison rehabilitation programs by about 40 percent.”
THE PUSHBACK
It’s just as well for you and I, a diligent group of California citizens have for 17 years challenged the claim on the CDC acronym and since 2004 reclaimed entirely the discarded California Department of Corrections name. The CDC works to put right misleading messages, empty words and muddy communication.
Founded in 1994, the California Department of Corrections (CDC) describes itself as “a private correctional facility that protects the public through the secure management, discipline, and rehabilitation of California’s advertising.”
Above is the CDC’s latest correction of fact and assault on complacency. From their website:
The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has unveiled a new campaign of bus shelter ads to celebrate America’s assassination of Osama bin Laden.
Released prior to July 4th, a total of ten ads in MUNI bus shelters throughout San Francisco were apprehended, rehabilitated and discharged without incident. The ten liberated ads represent each year in the long decade spanning the declaration of the War on Terror by President Bush and the eventual demise of al-Qaeda’s elusive leader.
Joining in celebration with millions of US civilians after the demise of bin Laden, the red, white and blue advertisements not only pay patriotic tribute to our country, but also celebrate the unsung history of American assassinations.
The rehabilitated advertisements are currently at liberty and seem to have successfully readjusted to public life. However, these ads will remain under surveillance by department staff to prevent recidivism and any potential lapse into prior criminal behavior.
You gotta love direct action. View more works here.
* You may have noticed I always refer to the Golden State’s prison system as CDCr; using a lowercase “r” is an simple text-based slight but it makes the point.
(Via the ever-wonderful Just Seeds Blog.)
Note: This one’s off topic, but I’ll be coming back with prison related visual critique sooner than you can say “Jack Lemon”.
The Computer History museum in Mountain View, California. Credit: David Glover
How do museums and galleries use online media to promote themselves?
I have been required to think about “The Museum” and it’s engagement with public and web2.0 audiences recently. If you look about you’ll find really good uses and catastrophic uses of web2.0 by museums and galleries alike. I don’t want to beat up on small galleries for their ill-advised, tweeting non-personas nor criticise lackadaisical irregular blog posting; both of these activities are for the intern. I’d really complain if I thought someone was getting paid to stumble through blog posts and ideas after a full day educating outreach audiences.
I do think the MoMA and San Francisco MoMA are fair game though.
Let’s start with the good.
MoMA: A delicate, understated film-short, with good production values. Some might argue it’s over sentimental and panders to arty self obsessions, but the MoMA is the beacon of an art world, art market and art-as-brand that has Western obsessions about the object at its core. I’ll allow it to veil this truth and remould it as individual yearning.
Click on the image below to view the video at The Contact Sheet blog.
Still from MoMA's promotional video "I See"
And now, to the bad.
SFMoMA: Apparently inspired by the White House launch of Obama coverage on Flickr, the San Francisco MoMA launched its own stalking eye upon director Neal Benezra. They call it Director Cam.
Benezra at press preview, being interviewed by Don Sanchez for ABC7, in the SFMoMA rooftop sculpture garden.
Now, I am all for transparency, informality, familiarity and all that, and, to be fair, SFMoMA has done this reasonably well with its other Flickr sets (although I’d prefer less high-society party coverage and more high-school outreach coverage).
However, Director Cam just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t want to see the privileged folk of the museum-world lording over its institutions, I want to see public audiences getting knee deep in collections & archives and mixing it up a bit. I want to see Flickr used as a means to entice people into the museum not as a mirror for already existing (and exclusive) engagements.
Neal talking with Exhibitions Design Manager / Chief Preparator Kent Roberts. With Chuck Schwab, chairman of the board of trustees (center) and Catherine Kuuskraa (right). In the background on the left wall you can just slightly see the new bridge commission, by Rosana Castrillo-Diaz.
BLDGBLOG (via Twitter) this week called for an alternative narrative of the built environment.
As I understood this, it is a theoretical proposal that would include interviews and testimonies of electricians, security guards and the fixers that keep the nuts and bolts in place while arty self-obsessed types flit about amid well-maintained frameworks.
After the white-collar fraudulent dismantling of the city, there is no better time to call for an alternative version of urbanity. A blue-collar city narrative.
With these thoughts looming, it is not Benezra that interests me, rather Kent Roberts, Exhibitions Design Manager and Chief Preparator at SFMoMA. Bring on ‘Museum Preparator Cam’!
All of this throws up more unanswered questions about the role of new media in the operations of museums and galleries. Fortunately, I recently discovered Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog which provides some riposte.
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Images. Computer History Museum by David Glover. As well as his Computer History Museum Set, you should check out his Byte Back Set.
Prison Photography 