Mediaboss Marketing

Over the past several weeks, eight large-scale murals have been painted directly onto streets in all five boroughs of New York City, all of them borne from creative undertakings as disparate and complex as the communities where theyre found.

One, splayed in front of 725 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in bright yellow road paint, was spearheadedits location highly conspicuous and increasingly vandalism-pronein part by the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Before that, on Fulton Street in Brooklyns historic Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, came a community-led mural with a crucial assist from the Department of Transportation. On Adam Clayton Boulevard in Harlem, another mural came to fruition as an artist- and community-led effort, also with city support. Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island have them too, all organized and executed in different ways with different players.

Its really a mix, Justin Garrett Moore, executive director of the citys Public Design Commission, told AN with regard to how the eight murals came to be and who oversaw their creation. Yet despite their differences, all eight works of street art have the same, resounding three-word message spelled out in chunky, Paul Bunyan-sized lettering: Black Lives Matter.

However, one Black Lives Matter mural in New York City, at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, is markedly different from the rest.

The size of the Foley Square mural, which stretches across three blocks of Centre Street from the New York Supreme Court House to the Manhattan Municipal Building, is roughly comparable with the others, albeit perhaps a bit grander in scale at 600 feet long. It also eschews the straightforward, monochrome execution of some of, but not all of, the citys Black Lives Matter murals in favor or 16 individual letters that are kaleidoscopic in nature. A veritable bonanza of colors, shapes, and designs, each letter can be viewed as a distinct, standalone work of art. In fact, three different artistsTijay Mohammed (Black), Sophia Dawson (Lives), and Patrice Payne (Matter)created each mammoth word.

Located in the civic heart of New York City adjacent to the historic site of the citys African Burial Ground, the Black Lives Matter mural at Foley Square is the only one thats creation was led byand was largely funded in part byarchitects, designers, and urban planners.

Like the other Black Lives Matter murals in New York, the mural at Foley Square follows in the oversized footsteps of the inaugural Black Lives Matter mural unveiled on June 5 just steps from the White House Lawn along 16th Street in Washington, D.C. The creation of that mural, led by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, was spurred in the early days of the ongoing, Black Lives Matter-led movementthe largest and most enduring civil rights protest of its kind in decadesagainst social injustice, police brutality, and institutionalized racism. The movement was galvanized by the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis along with the deaths of other Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement.

Similar to NYCs other Black Lives Murals, the Foley Square mural involved the participation of city agencies and officials. A key player was Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who, working in partnership with Black Lives Matter of Greater NY, was instrumental in selecting and securing the site. The 11-member Public Design Commission, which was involved more directly in the Foley Square mural than the others, is also a city agency and, as such, Moore served as a logistics-oriented choreographer of sorts, helping to coordinate between the impressive multitude of factions that contributed, artistically and financially to the mural. Despite all the bad impressions people have about government, there were good people from multiple agencies working to make this happen, he said. Theres a lot of stuff that it takes to get stuff like this done.

But as Moore clarified, the Foley Square mural was, in the end, largely an independent effort, working between private and grassroots organizations.

Moore went on to call the project an unusual combination of people from the architecture, design, and built environment community that were motivated to really connect the mural idea to public space explicitly, and the idea to a civic center more explicitly.

Working in concert with youth arts nonprofit Thrive Collective and technical artist support-providing TATS CRU, a Bronx-based collective of graffiti artists-turned muralists, on the planning/logistical front was WXY Architecture + Urban Design.

Amina Hassen, an associate and urban planner, and architect Jhordan Channer served as the firms project leads.

For a long time, in both urban planning and in architecture, there has been a refusal to acknowledge how political our work really is, said Hassen. For me, personally, it feels very important at this point in time to acknowledge that as creators who are in positions to help shape the public realm that we come to it with our values and our political standingsbecause the places that we are involved in creating are not neutral spaces.

Referring to WXY as true allies with the agency and resources and connections that absolutely helped make this happen, Moore noted that the firm was also crucial in orchestrating a peer network of design firms, most of them based downtown, that leant financial support to the project. Firms that contributed were, among others, Snhetta, COOKFOX, Rogers Partners, SCAPE, ODA, FXCollaborative, SHoP Architects, and Ken Smith Workshop. (A complete list can be found here.)

Janovic Paint & Decorating Center in SoHo and Benjamin Moore donated the 180 gallons of paint used to realize the mural, a work of public art that Channer referred to as counter-narrative to the racist, colonial symbols in our public spaces.

With so many players contributing artistically, technically, and fiscally, the mural at Foley Square took a bit longer to conceive and complete than its counterparts. (It was originally slated to be unveiled on Juneteenth but was completed July 3). This more deliberate pace, however, was largely by design as explained by Moore.

It was really important that it was a broader effort; it took us more time to do it but it was important that how we did it really mattered, he said. The fact that we had so many participants and players was a part of that process.

Moore also stressed the importance of a vetting process that was put in place to ensure that all donations and logistical support were aligned with what Black Lives Matters is aligned with broadly. It took time to do that vetting and find the right partners to ensure that is was a coalition of people that were fully committed to the work, he explained.

The involvement of Percent for Art, a program of the Department of Cultural Affairs, was also crucial in seeking out emerging artists in lieu of established ones with existing platforms and large followings. It was a very intentional process, said Moore. People who arent normally given a platform and agency to do this kind of work were brought in.

And as Moore added, the diversity of the statementBlack Lives Matteris reflected in the artists themselves, who are of different religious backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations. Providing a platform for the artists to give this statement in their own voices was really important, he said.

As for the Foley Square murals positioning amidst some of the citys most powerful bureaucratic edifices, it was just as intentional as all other aspects of its creation.

Noting the proximity of the federal courthouse, New York City Police Department headquarters, and the African Burial Ground, Channer explained: Conceptually, its an attempt to create a space on the street where people of color can exist [] its sort of labeled for them.

Both Hassen and Channer were quick to emphasize the significance of their involvement in the mural as professional shapers of the built environmentan urban planner and an architect, respectively, both of colorwho have direct hands in making public spaces more accessible and more equitable to all. It was important that we became a part of this and really defined for ourselves what our streets look like and what those places we inhabit look like, said Channer.

Urbanists and architects have a lot of work to do to make Black Lives Matter in how we create and improve our public realm, Hassen added. By participating in this mural, its really just a statement of a start to rethinking our ways of working.

Excerpt from:
Foley Square's Black Lives Matter mural is a designer-led transformation of public space - The Architect's Newspaper

The answer is clear. It is because BLM feeds into the same wretched culture of victimhood and oppression that has been cynically championed by the left for decades. By continually caricaturing black people as perpetual victims of systemic white racism it infantilises them by depicting us as stupid, helpless and impotent cultural punchbags, forever crushed beneath externalised discriminatory forces beyond our control.

It is a grotesque form of reanimated cultural imperialism that envisages a world in which every black action can only ever be a reaction to white provocation, as if we were little more than flaccid puppet minstrels forever tied to the string of white mastermind omnipotence. In so doing, black people are absolved of our need to take responsibility for our own actions and futures and must instead await salvation by accepting that our own freedom and empowerment are not ours to claim but a white establishments to give.

Oddly, it is a cult enthusiastically energised by successful black personalities, with the likes of John Boyega, Afua Hirsch and Stormzy absurdly claiming that the society in which they gained their own success is somehow systemically inclined to withhold it from all their black peers. And thiscult is founded on a toxic crucible: slavery. Martin Luther King talked of freedom far more than he talked of slavery. Yet now the civil rights lexicon has been reversed and slavery is now the historical deadweight from which BLM and its liberal enablers refuse to let black people escape.

Yes, the Atlantic slave trade was a horrendous evil. But to claim that a 400-year-old event that adapted barbarous Arab and African practices that had already been in place for thousands of years is responsible for unilaterally framing the life choices and experiences of black people today is as preposterous as suggesting that cruise ship bookings are still hampered by the Titanic. It is also a claim that might attain more integrity were it accompanied by even a scintilla of concern for the estimated 40 million people worldwide trapped in slavery today.

BLMs twisted narratives have been underscored by a liberal establishment and mainstream media that deploys identity politics to objectify and homogenise black people. In so doing it offensively lumps all black people into a vast cultural tick-box in which, by magical virtue of our pigmentation, we have all been gifted with the telepathic ability to think, eat, act and talk exactly the same way.

Yet by ignorantly conflating the richness and diversity of the black experience into a single diminished entity, patronising, reductionist terms like the black and dreaded BAME community invariably flow and perpetuate an embattled sense of otherness that merely succeeds in further separating and marginalising black people from mainstream society.

And, like all good liberal pogroms, this homogenisation is specifically designed to disenfranchise individuality, sever the links between black people and our brothers and sisters in other racial groups and, most importantly, to achieve the hallowed liberal goal of glorifying difference. And glorifying difference is exactly what BLM and the Marxist junta it seeks to establish is all about.

True integration - where character matters more than colour and George Floyd could just as easily have become a cardiologist as a criminal - was the utopian vision on which Martin Luther King based his dream, and it should be the goal of all mature Western democracies. But celebratingdifference is intolerable to a guilt-ridden liberal elite groggy on the opiate of multiculturalism. Instead it embraced the tyranny of diversity to obscure integration and emphasise what divides us rather than what unites us.

We now see this tyranny being prosecuted in a McCarthyan culture war that seeks to expunge white post-imperialist liberal guilt and self-loathing by unilaterally imposing its revisionist, puritanical values on society and toppling all ideological dissenters from Gone With the Wind to historical statues. But make no mistake, this nave identinarian purge could not just incite the odious far right but sow enough resentment and division to set backrace relations by years.

Racism is real and horrific and must be rooted out wherever it is found. But the UK, and England in particular, has offered sanctuary and prosperity to generations of immigrants who in turn have helped to transform it into one of the most welcoming and inclusive societies in the world. Moreover the way to defeat racism is to not throughthe divisive rhetoric and crass militancy of a movement that seeks to commoditise black suffering to perpetuate the divisive, defeatist myth of white privilege.

The answer is for black people not to define ourselves by how others may define us but to realise that we and we alone are the key to empowering our lives and claiming the freedom that is everyones right. Yes, of course the lives of George Floyd and all black people matter. But so too did the life of Tony Timpa. And the life of the innocent unborn black baby Floyd threatened to execute in its mothers womb.

Until black people take responsibility for their role in ending and oppressing the lives of other black people and until the regressive liberal elite realises that sowing division and resentment will lead to genuinesystemic inequality, then black lives will only continue to matter on the rare occasions when white people take them.

Ike Ijeh is an architect and critic

Visit link:
Why does Black Lives Matter only care about black lives when white people are threatening them? - Telegraph.co.uk

As nationwide protests against police violence and racial inequality continue in the U.S., K-pop fans, famous for their social media savvy, are using their collective power to rally around the Black Lives Matter movement.

K-pop stands for Korean popular music. So far, fans have crashed police department apps and co-opted hashtags. This highlights the subversive tools that have become part of the K-pop standom which refers to the obsessive, dedicated, diehard fandom resistance.

When K-pop stars BTS and their company, Big Hit, donated US$1 million to Black Lives Matter, BTS fans mobilized in a #MatchAMillion campaign. They successfully reached their fundraising target in 24 hours.

Big Hit was an outlier. While K-pop fans have received media attention for their support in the Black Lives Matter movement, the industry has largely remained quiet about what has become a global flashpoint. The silence from most of the K-pop industry stands out even more against the unprecedented number of businesses standing with the anti-racism movement as a corporate strategy.

Im a scholar of popular culture, and my research on K-pop shows how the K-pop industrys conventional practice of shying away from political issues is currently being challenged by the more politically vocal and engaged fans at the moment of Black Lives Matter.

K-pop is generally understood as a particular style of music produced, distributed and consumed within the idol training and management system.

Under this system, Korean entertainment companies tightly control the images of the young K-pop stars and groom them to become multi-entertainers who can make various media appearances and potentially land numerous lucrative endorsement deals and partnerships with brands.

This goal requires K-pop stars to have a broad commercial appeal, secured through their exuberance and exhibition of values that the Korean public approve, such as humility, hard work, discipline and obedience.

The K-pop industry has a long history of staying out of political and social issues. Entertainment companies fear that getting mired in politics will hurt business.

Even when millions of Koreans peacefully took to the streets for 20 consecutive weekends to demand the impeachment of ex-President Park Geun-hye for her role in the government corruption, the K-pop industry and its stars stayed mum.

K-pops transnational popularity, especially in East Asia, a region that has complex geopolitics and tensions from unresolved historical conflicts, is another reason the industry stays apolitical.

But due to the differing demands of the Korean fans who want their K-pop stars to advance Koreas nationalistic causes and the international fans who want the K-pop stars to be sympathetic to their local causes, K-pops industrys desire to maintain apolitical neutrality seems to be less tenable.

Even when K-pop stars avoid expressing their political views, geopolitical feuds between different countries in the East Asian region can lead to disastrous financial consequences.

The world saw the result of this in the aftermath of the the U.S. missile defense systems deployment on the Korean soil. Worried that the sophisticated radar systems included in the system can track Chinas own missiles, the Chinese government issued a stern warning that the deployment of THAAD will lead to a disastrous relationship between two countries.

When the Korean government failed to heed to that demand, China banned Korean entertainment and entertainers, leading many Korean companies to see their share prices to dip more than 15% within a month of those retaliatory actions.

With K-pops growth into a $5 billion global industry, Korean entertainment companies collective silence on Black Lives Matter seems to be less of a viable option when issues of racism and social inequality matter greatly to the American fans whose passion and effective fan labor have been at the center of that global growth.

K-pops global success being indebted to Black music and fandom is another important factor to why the K-pop industry cannot ignore the social justice movements that are happening in the U.S.

K-pops influence from Black music such as hip hop, rap and R&B is a huge factor in K-pops transnational appeal. Lee Soo Man, the founder of SM Entertainment, has acknowledged the connection, saying that K-pop is based on Black music.

The founders of JYP, YG and Big Hit Entertainment have all publicly stated their influence from Black artists. The K-pop industry continues to draw inspiration from Black music by hiring Black American lyricists and producers to provide R&B style music.

K-pops breakthrough in the U.S. is largely attributed to its transnational fandom base, with Black fans contributing significantly to transform K-pop from a niche genre to a global phenomenon.

In fact, K-pops success in the U.S. was possible not because of a white, mainstream audience, but because a small, passionate group of K-pop fans many from communities of color discovered K-pop as they sought alternatives to the mainstream popular culture that continues to privilege white representation as the norm.

These fans are not political wallflowers.

American K-pop fans have held American journalists and mainstream media accountable when those journalists and outlets used racist stereotypes to cover K-pop. They have called out a white, Western record executive who expressed his desire to whitewash K-pop by creating a K-pop group without Koreans.

They have also challenged the racist and xenophobic actions of MTV when it created a separate category for K-pop artists called Best K-pop while excluding them from the main awards such as Best Pop or Artist of the Year for Video Music Awards.

For these American fans, K-pop has become a tool for social justice.

However, fans are also looking at this tool in the context of the K-pop industrys and the fandoms anti-Black racist practices as K-pop is being celebrated as a popular weapon for activism.

K-pop idols have a history of wearing cornrows, braids or dreads, performing in Blackface or making jokes about Black people.

Considering that K-pop is a product of systematic planning and controlled management, these anti-Black performances were done with the approval of the Korean entertainment companies. As K-pop fans in America and around the world are protesting for social justice and racial equality, they are also using the moment to reflect on K-pops practices of racism and cultural appropriation.

The current moment is one of reckoning for the K-pop industry, where the narrow nationalism of its apoliticism appears at great odds with its American K-pop fans demand for political and social change.

A significant number of K-pop stars have already publicly stated their support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Korean entertainment companies that generally encourage their stars to refrain from political expressions as part of their management strategy have not stopped them from doing so.

In fact, on June 19, 2020, SM Entertainment, Koreas biggest entertainment company, released an official statement on the Black Lives Matter movement. It took more than three weeks since the protests after the death of George Floyd and much prodding from American fans who have called out the company to speak out with #SMBLACKOUT movement for the company to issue its support.

However, this shows how the socially conscious and politically outspoken American fans can nudge the K-pop industry to become more political, especially as K-pop aims to stay global.

[Youre smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversations authors and editors. You can get our highlights each weekend.]

Read the original post:
Rethinking the K-pop industry's silence during the Black Lives Matter movement - The Conversation US

Brands such as Nike and Adidas to PG Tips and Space NK have been expressing solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement by issuing statements and adverts of support from Nike playing with their memorable tagline of Just Do It by asking consumers for once, Dont Do It to the #Solidaritea hashtag taken up by many tea brands. Many of these messages have been accompanied by promises to take a hard look at each companys history and current working practises to see what changes can be made to address structural racism.

The idea that we need to decolonise various areas of society is finally growing. But the idea itself is, of course, nothing new. Calls and attempts to decolonise curriculums, public transport systems, museum collections, healthcare systems and so on have been around for a while, but finally many appear to be taking it a bit more seriously.

Decolonising involves removing or rewriting rules and concepts left by colonial-era thinking that still control or influence society. And, of course, this means basically every sector of society. It is an idea that is becoming more widespread. But even though brands are stepping up and making statements, the broader industries behind these messages also need interrogating. Decolonisation, for example, is rarely discussed in my field, advertising and it needs to be.

American city dwellers, for example, usually see 5,000 adverts a day and many contain messages that reinforce colonial thinking. Adverts reflect what a society thinks about itself. One study found that white advert characters are more likely than characters of colour to be depicted as having an occupation. Such subtle racist and gendered stereotypes are common in adverts around the world.

A poster campaign from earlier this year by the Mexican department store chain Sears, for example, shows an indigenous woman selling bracelets next to a tall white woman. Another shows a white man looking down at another indigenous person, the headline reading Vacations.

Also read: Indian Americans, on the Matter of Black Lives

White superiority is implied in these adverts. The differences between primitive clothing and contemporary fashion are highlighted, something that the mans downward gaze and womans nonchalance further emphasise. These adverts also objectify indigenous peoples as something to be looked at on holiday. Someone to take a selfie with, like an animal at the zoo. Sears didnt remove the ads. The store responded to complaints by tweeting that it celebrates Mexican culture.

One advert that drew particular attention in the UK and US was the 2017 Dove ad that showed a black woman removing her brown top, revealing a white woman underneath. Although this was not the intended message, it could certainly be read to imply that by using Dove the consumer can become white. This upset some consumers who felt that Dove was referring to old colonial-era soap ads that portrayed black people as unclean. Dove removed the ad and started reviewing online content.

And a recent Dolce and Gabbana social media campaign, created in Italy for the Asian market, featured a Chinese model attempting to use chopsticks to eat Italian food, looking fabulous in her D&G clothing. This deeply offended Chinese luxury consumers. The ads were taken down and D&G sales drastically dropped, as celebrities withdrew their support for the brand.

These cases show that advertising needs to be decolonised: it can and does support discriminatory thinking thinking that often has its roots in the colonial era.

Ways to decolonise advertising

I am considering how we can remove such thinking from advertising, and there are a number of steps I think the industry should take.

The most obvious place to start this is within universities, which are already taking steps to decolonise other subjects, from history (more of a focus on colonial histories) to literature (moving beyond the set canon of what are often white male writers) and design (creating a space for designers working outside the confines of the Anglo-European sphere).

Also read: Race Is at the Heart of the Militarisation of the US Police Force

But most marketing courses have not yet taken such steps. It should become standard practice for marketing courses to emphasise how advertising not only persuades consumers but also influences society. Just as today we laugh at ads from the 1950s and their reflection of negative gender stereotypes, such as women stuck at home doing the washing, or not being able to drive correctly, the same exercise will certainly be done in 2050, analysing our current advertising. Advertisers had better be prepared and bear this in mind.

A change is also needed within actual advertising agencies, which are dominated by white men in top positions. Even though more women are obtaining these roles, there needs to be more of a gender balance, and far more racial diversity is needed. This will help encourage inclusive messages. In the UK, the Advertising Association has just released a report on diversity and inclusion concluding that the challenge is to ensure the industry is one in which Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) recruits can prosper.

In addition, the companies paying for advertising need to change by practising what they preach. This means that they need to follow through and act on their recent messages of solidarity.

Take Nikes Dont Do It ad. This is a good example of a brand calling attention to racism in society. But this, too, has been controversial because even though Nike has supported black athletes over the years, the company has been questioned over its lack of black representation on its leadership team. Brands associating themselves with racial equality need to back words with actions.

Also read: Amidst Black Lives Matter Stir, America Observes a Significant Juneteenth

Finally, regulatory bodies that govern advertising should be more proactive, creating specific rules that guide the ad industry before adverts become offensive. This might involve introducing regulations around reinforcing the concept of white superiority. The UKs Advertising Standards Authority has attempted to be proactive in this way, with the negative stereotypes rules that banned two ads in 2019, including Volkswagen. So this is a step in the right direction.

Of course, all of these steps will also feed into the efforts to decolonise elsewhere. The process of decolonising institutions will create a more egalitarian society so this is something to strive towards.

Carl W Jones is a senior lecturer at the School of Media and Communication at the University of Westminster

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Visit link:
As Brands Stand in Solidarity With Black Lives Matter, They Must Also Decolonise - The Wire

A Black Lives Matter mural is painted in front of Cincinnati City Hall, Thursday, June 18, 2020. Cincinnati Enquirer

There are no funds in the budget for maintaining a pedestrian plaza outside of City Hall, City Manager Patrick Duhaney wrote in a Friday memo to Mayor John Cranley and councilmembers.

To close Plum Street and provide a plaza around the new "Black Lives Matter!" mural, at least $25,000 is needed. That money would go towards traffic signal timing modifications, sign installation and permanent barricades. The memo states these funds do not exist in the fiscal year 2021 budget.

The memo also states there are limited options for successfully sealing the mural, which would protect the mural from potential damage and fading.

Duhaney raised concerns Wednesday when council passed a motion to establish a pedestrian plaza on Plum Street to preserve the mural.

Closing Plum Street between Eighth and Ninth streets would cause problems for residents and a business owner in the area, Duhaney said.

[ We can't do work like this without our supporters.Please consider a subscription to Cincinnati.com. ]

The artists who created the mural hope the space can be a center of constructive conversation and a way to honor Cincinnati's Black community members. Alandes Powell, who wrote the poem which inspired the mural, said the "real work" will come after the mural is preserved.

But getting to that point might take some time, Duhaney said Wednesday.

On Friday Duhaney released a full list of concerns in a memo to Mayor John Cranley and members of City Council. Those concernsare outlined below, per Duhaney's memo:

The Department of Transportation and Engineering will need to provide a plan which addresses the above concerns and then get that plan reviewed and approved by the City Planning Commission, the memo states. If the street closure is proved feasible, an ordinance of City Council will need to officially approve the closure of Plum Street and appropriate funds.

Read or Share this story: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/06/26/city-doesnt-have-funds-preserve-black-lives-matter-mural/3266109001/

View post:
Here are the issues with closing Plum Street for the 'Black Lives Matter!' mural - The Cincinnati Enquirer