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The History of Corporations Recruiting Artists to Inspire Their Employees
- nemild 8y agoFor more on Facebook's art focus, see their Little Red Book (2012) given to every employee: http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-facebooks-little-red-book-2015-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-facebooks-little-red-b... At Stanford, Professor Fred Turner has written a critique of Facebook's art culture (both the Analog Research Laboratory and the Artist in Residence Program), putting Facebook in the context of art programs that came before. Excerpt: "First, the Lab’s posters have linked calls for labor to calls for self-transformation. In the industrial era, a motto like “STAY FOCUSED AND KEEP SHIPPING” would represent a straightforward professional exhortation: DO YOUR JOB. But set in the same type as a poster reading “WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WEREN’T AFRAID?” and placed in the same sorts of locations, the corporate slogan can become an answer to a request for self-discovery." http://fredturner.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/Turner-Art-at-Facebook-Poetics-Preprint.pdf http://fredturner.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/Turner-Art...
- jadedhacker 8y agoThat second link you posted was excellent. It's a very cutting criticism. "When the Analog Research Lab posts a picture of Dolores Huerta on the walls of a company whose engineers have no unions, it demonstrates its own power to transform the most embodied and institutionalized political movements into acts of decontextualized expression. On a poster, Dolores Huerta’s image becomes a sign, emptied of its history, and repurposed. A picture that might once have inspired marches in the street by impoverished farm workers now offers wealthy engineers an opportunity to celebrate the variety of identities their company embraces. In the workplace, that embrace may mean a more diverse set of em- ployees. Online, it means a larger, more varied set of communities and social experiences to mine."
- olivermarks 8y agoDespite the emphasis on sponsoring the arts, a lot of SV promotional materials feel uncomfortably close to Soviet era propaganda posters to me https://www.google.com/search?q=soviet+propaganda+posters&client=opera&hs=agt&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_ntyGv43cAhWFN30KHZ5MDacQsAQIQA&biw=1366&bih=749 https://www.google.com/search?q=soviet+propaganda+posters&cl...
- maxxxxx 8y agoI have told my coworkers that walking around in some sections of the office feels like walking around in Eastern Germany. Pretty much the same posters and also the obvious disconnect between the messages in the posters and reality.
- ShabbosGoy 8y agoI noticed this too. What do you think it means, in the context of the culture of SV?
- extralego 8y agoThis is a well-researched and frequently discussed topic in critical theory circles. What it means is not much up for debate anymore. It means corporations have more in common with authoritarian regimes than is obvious. They are systematically cold and all-powerful, and merely acting out the typical series of behaviors that cold and powerful organizations act out. By definition, corporations have no social commitment to the society within which they operate and this seems to be at the heart of the issue. Be careful to note the difference between authoritarianism and socialism. They do not favor one another. In fact, they are mostly in opposition if anything. Socialism concerns social and economic structures and authoritarianism concerns governmental structures. You might like a book called Brave New World by Audus Huxley. It’s a science-fictional narrative that explores the potential of human society to succumb to these cruel structures.
- mc32 8y agoI think they know it helps to mold people one way, to get them to "drink the cool-aid" as it were, in a cool "Soviet retro" kind of way. Art in ideology isn't much different from art in propaganda (i.e. advertising), it serves similar purpose.
- s-shellfish 8y agoDo you have examples of the SV posters?
- maxxxxx 8y agoIs anyone else tired of the whole "inspiring" stuff? When a company does this I always think that's just a cheap way to squeeze more out of employees. I'd much prefer to be "rewarded" or "enabled" or "respected".
- rando444 8y agoThe things you list are not mutually exclusive.
- pasbesoin 8y agoIt's been a while since I thought of this. (More Javascript-y, now, but perhaps still the same registrant.) https://despair.com/collections/posters https://despair.com/collections/posters A personal favorite, from a dark time: https://despair.com/products/burnout https://despair.com/products/burnout