Placards held high those without “power” serve snippets and catchphrases that so eloquently or naively huck bricks at the pillars of capitalism; as if bumper stickers and buttons have ever done anything to further a cause.  Words are in that same vain, as they only serve the mind’s eye.

Shedding light when the apropos time permits such vain and self-serving reflection.  We are not fools to be manipulated by cathode rays and justified text.  We are much more than office buildings, designer clothes and $1,000 a month apartments, we are the daughters and sons, the descendants of the “greatest generation.”  For all their racist, and progressively retarded, flaws the “American Dream” breathed fresh air from the ingenuity and vibrancy of their devotion. A dream, pushed forward by the civil rights generation, that has been abandoned, not only by cronies on Capitol Hill and Wall Street alike, but by those who would rather exercise ignorance above all else.

Somehow we have become complacent in chasing the dreams of our forbearers.   A belief that what does not directly affect us will somehow fade away: a problem to be dealt with by others, at a less convenient time.  That decision should not, and shall not, be burdened upon those who had no part in the construction.  This call to action is not one of contempt or accusation: this is a rallying cry to all those who stand on the sidelines, thinking that their intellect and participation is irrelevant and unwelcome.  An invitation is extended, to join the conversation and action towards the perfect union so many have fought for, and died to preserve.

Lawrence is a Graphic Design student at Montclair State University in New Jersey. Feel free to contact him here to discuss his ideas, opinions and values.

Emotional Branding
I believe it is a phenomenon of contemporary marketing and we are at its pentacle. Created to provide the consumer a more engaging interaction with the vendor, Emotional Branding has become a new business model for success in the consumer marketplace. The idea of Emotional Branding was best described by Marc Gobé,

Emotional Branding has opened the pathway to an entirely new kind of thinking, which explores how brands can connect with people in a more sensitive and humanistic way and touch people profoundly at the level of the senses and emotions.

Marc Gobé, Emotional Branding - The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People.

In theory I believe Emotional Branding is a wonderful idea. It is empowering to the consumer, it insinuates a higher level of customer service and most importantly it places the practicing business at the same level as the consumer.

Darwin Marketing
However Emotional Branding has evolved into a powerful tool for building a culture around a product. Traditionally a culture is founded by a history of shared experiences, emotions and values. In this case culture is manufactured and is a shallow, substance-less framework created to transfix a group by projecting idealistic values around a product.

Generation Who?
The corporations in question cannot be held entirely responsible. The age falling into this culture trap seems to most commonly be those from ages 15-30. This group arguably has the weakest sense of self-identity to ever be targeted by marketers. There has been no radical movement, no revolutionary musicians, no influential political leaders and no major wars to claim scores of its youth.

For the corporations, the trap was already set. All that had to be done was to create an appealing culture around a product using Emotional Branding techniques. Armed with their new pseudo-culture this league of buyers becomes loyal to a product beyond reason.

Greetings Internet friends! I’m Marc Valega, a well-rounded creative soul. I like to think so, at least. I dabble here and there. I went to school for Printmaking, but I am capable of blowing your mind several different ways. I mainly blow minds with ridiculous cartoonish masterpieces. I’ve recently finished a series of shadow box print thingies named, “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” Seven Minutes in Heaven is a kissing game where two randomly selected participants are left alone in a closet for seven minutes to make out. I created this series with a utopian thought in mind, and in these pieces I’ve brought together opposing fictional characters through the intimate union of making out. These characters are able to put their quarrels behind them and embrace one another. They are able realize the world is not as serious as their prior notions like them to believe. This series is initially intended to put a smile on the viewer’s face due to the outrageous subject matter, but if the viewer wants to dig deeper there are nutrients to nourish their contemplative minds. I would describe my artwork as:

A Knock! Knock! Joke that can be grossly misinterpreted.

I have my own intent for the work, but I don’t necessarily care if the viewer picks up what I’m throwing out there. I find it amusing how differently one piece can be read; to me their interpretation reflects the person they are. I’m not here to cater to the masses; I’m here to do what I like. Unless someone is going to pay me the Big Bucks to cater to the masses, I won’t.

Speaking of paying somebody to create artwork, I also illustrate. Some of my clients have been Bent Stationery, Drive Thru Records, and Suburban Kids With Biblical Names. So if you’re reading this, and you need any kind of image, and have money to give me, I’m willing to produce quality work. Just hit me up! I can also do video and graphic design pretty well. So if you have a full time position, I need a job.

I’m also the white Timbaland, I make some groovy tunes with some of my friends. You can check them out over at their myspace. We’re actually filming our second music video for a spanking new song entitled, “Adequately Drunk, Officially Crunk” which we are hoping to have up by the end of Summer.

Go forth and spread the word of Marc Valega

Marc Valega is an artist, designer and illustrater from the mean streets of Linden, New Jersey. More of his work can be seen at his website.

I began making photographs in high school. I attended Seton Hall Preparatory school in West Orange, New Jersey, and took a course with Mr. Richard Morris. I learned what made a good photograph, and still employ the knowledge I have gained from the Prep today.

I still use my original camera body that I received as a birthday present in middle school, a Nikon N60. My lenses are a Nikon Nikkor AF 35-80mm F4-5.6, and a Nikon Nikkor AF 50mm F1.8. I use a 52mm Hoya UV filter and a 52mm B+W polarizing filter. I mainly shoot Kodak Tri-X 400 as I believe it is the best film ever created.

My inspiration is my father, a magnificent photographer.

More work by Christopher Rozewski can be viewed here

]]> http://www.paradigm-magazine.org/2008/christopher-rozewski-life-lives-around-the-world/feed/ http://www.paradigm-magazine.org/2008/thoughts-from-a-racing-mind/ http://www.paradigm-magazine.org/2008/thoughts-from-a-racing-mind/#comments Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:00:10 +0000 Chris Fetherston http://www.paradigm-magazine.org/wordpress/?p=17 I was given a question: “Why does our contemporary culture place such little value on thought?” First of all, this question is a question that could only be asked by someone who believes most people in our culture do not think as much as they should. I believe our culture today places just as much emphasis on thought as any other large culture ever has. We have even more things to think about today. It is the information age after all. The problem lies in the fact that we are thinking the wrong thoughts. I would like to rephrase this question as, “Why does contemporary culture put so little emphasis on the value of thoughts we think?”

Our culture puts a lot of thought into what people should be thinking. It tells us what to think about all the time. One can assume that the average middle class person’s day consists of either listening to the radio, or watching TV. Commercials consist of a good 25% of what we see and hear all day. This makes us think a lot. It makes us think of what to buy, when to buy it, and which insurance quote is the lowest. It makes us think of the best way to lose weight, and how bad cigarettes are. It makes us question what we look like and who we are, and we don’t even have to come up with the answer to our questions! Instead it hands the answers to us on a silver platter. It makes us insecure when we aren’t in style, and secure when we are. We have to think a lot to stay on top in today’s world. We have to think a lot about what’s hip and what’s not.

As of now, it may sound like our culture places a lot of value on what thoughts we think. This is not quite correct. It is true that our culture makes us think a lot. It might be argued that it is telling us what to think, but in the end, only we can tell us what to think. Even if you make the argument, “You just said the answers are given to us in the last paragraph! You don’t think about a problem when you’re given the answer!”. Remember I said it came on a silver platter? Well I didn’t tell you there was a pile of beef jerky on the plate. We end up chewing on what is given to us, even if we didn’t think of it ourselves. When someone goes out and buys a fashionable pair of sunglasses, they don’t think about why they are buying them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about them constantly. Everyone they pass, they will be hoping their new glasses get noticed. They might even spend the entire night researching what color is most fashionable with their new sunglasses. This takes a lot of thought! We just might not care what we are thinking, because we cannot easily be convinced if it is right or wrong.

As an example, and this is a true story. I went to college with a girl who had a brand new iPhone. I asked her if she knew where it was made, and how it is disposed of when it is thrown out. Arguably two of the most important questions one can ask about a product. Naturally like most consumers, she had no idea. She only cared that she had it. I then asked her why she had to have the internet on the phone when she was on a computer 8 hours a day. She said because when she is in the car it is helpful, and she went on to tell me so much information about what the phone can do that I could barely follow along. I asked her how many times she used all of the features that she just told me about, and naturally she acted like a monkey and howled at me saying something like, “Why are you ruining my day?”

I simply said back, “At least I do it with purpose.”

What I am getting at in this example is that people might be thinking more than they every have. They just aren’t asking themselves why they think about what they do. Another simpler example, would be a mathematician who can do extremely complicated physics calculations, but never had a girlfriend in his life. Or a famous pop star that lives a life of such extreme excess and seclusion from everyday life, that she forgets what ‘everyday life’ is, which changes her perception of the everyday person to one of an ant.

It is extremely hard to get people to question themselves. Almost everyone questions every last person they can think of before questioning themselves. If you ever wore sandals to the beach for a day or two and you and your friends were sitting down at the end of the day and someone said, “Who’s feet stink?” I guarantee noone would look at their feet first. Though if it was dog poo on our shoe, we might look at our own feet. Why? Because it wasn’t our fault. It was the dog’s.

The vast majority of people on this planet don’t enjoy questioning themselves, because they know deep down inside they could be wrong. It gets harder and harder to question yourself because of the build up over time of things you had no idea you were doing, that you knew were wrong but never admitted to.

It would be best to sum up what has been said in an example you can visualize:

Imagine the ‘self’ as a marble. Imagine information the self comes across as rubber bands. When we are informed of something via TV, a friend, or even our own thought, we place a rubber band on the marble. When we question an idea, we stretch a rubber band that has been already placed on the marble, and compare it to a band that might be more elastic and more ‘correct’, and than replace the one that was on the marble with the more suitable band. This is how we are able to change ourselves for the better, and for the worse.

The problem with today’s information age is that there are hundreds of rubber bands being thrown at us every minute of every day, many of which are not exactly the most elastic and helpful bands. People are such large rubber band balls by now that most of them don’t know how to take them off anymore because they’ve gotten so tight. If they ever wanted to make a fundamental change in their life, they would have to go to one of the source rubber bands. Which by now is underneath a ton of other rubber bands. So why bother? Just keep adding more. One day you won’t be able to fit anymore and you will stop adding them all together. You won’t have to, or be able to… think again!

So I ask of you. Please. Use only the rubber bands that are really important, and always be ready to replace them with better ones. They do get old and worn eventually. As does all knowledge. Being able to replace them is the only way to grow yourself throughout your entire life. Marbles are much more beautiful than an ugly rubber band ball. If you have to… just start with a couple on the outside. Your plasma screen and your iPhone perhaps? Maybe replace them with a tree and a sunset? Just a thought…

Adam Gazdalski is an Artist, Writer and Graphic Designer located in Pennsylvania. He can be contacted here.

The Mexican immigrant worker in New York is a perfect example of the hero who has gone unnoticed. It is common for a Mexican worker in New York to work extraordinary hours in extreme conditions for very low wages which are saved at great cost and sacrifice and sent to families and communities in Mexico who rely on them to survive.

The Mexican economy has quietly become dependent on the money sent from workers in the US. Conversely, the US economy has quietly become dependent on the labor of Mexican immigrants. Along with the depth of their sacrifice, it is the quietness of this dependence which makes Mexican immigrant workers a subject of interest.

The principal objective of this series is to pay homage to these brave and determined men and women that somehow manage, without the help of any supernatural power, to withstand extreme conditions of labor in order to help their families and communities survive and prosper.

This project consists of 20 color photographs of Mexican immigrants dressed in the costumes of popular American and Mexican superheroes. Each photo pictures the worker/superhero in their work environment, and is accompanied by a short text including the worker’s name, their hometown in Mexico, the number of years they have been working in New York, and the amount of money they send to Mexico each week

Dulce Pinzón is a photographer working in New York City. You can learn more about her and her work here

I can’t help but question just how healthy is a whole culture running in front of the hour hand in near perfect time?

The American working landscape has changed drastically in the past twenty to thirty years. Once great economic powerhouses assembled many workers in one place at one time to manufacture goods that our infrastructure once supported. American manufacturing industries, such as the Detroit automotive industry and the Pennsylvania steel forges, that are struggling or have completely disappeared in the progression of our economy built the structure of our contemporary work practices.

Industrial life has left us a regimen that herds the masses about their day in a systematic and detrimental ritual. The more time I spend subscribed to the nine-to-five the more I observe the damaging effects.

Traffic!
It may seem trivial and expected to complain about traffic but I consider it a powerful symbol of a greater problem. Our transportation system is overloaded daily; public transit is poorly maintained and ill-equipped to handle the crowds at peak times. Daily thousands of individuals sit bitterly on a four lane highway idling in first gear. The greater problem is very clear to me here. At a macro-level placing large groups in motion at the same time is costly, inefficient and damaging to our transportation system.

Insomnia
What sleep pattern is truly natural to humans? Is the standard seven to eight hours most natural? Do all of us function best with the same style of rest? I believe that the answers to these questions have been prescribed by our rudimentary labor schedule and not truly evaluated. I’ve met people that do their best work while burning the midnight oil, so why force them to a cube at the opposite time?

Equilibrium
The individuals around me that I observe on the “nine to five times five” are entirely unapproachable on Monday. This is a terrible way to live and produces a disposition that rolls like a flat tire. I see no balance in dragging through the week for brief enjoyment on the weekend then the horrible Monday crash. A flexible work schedule would persuade a more balanced flow of life.

As we shed the confines of the factory it is equally important to recognize and challenge the old ideas they have left behind. The American economy has incurred a strong shift from manufacturing to service and much of the labor force is technologically enabled to work anywhere at anytime. The productivity of technical labor and the quality of life for those who do it could be greatly improved by opening up the work schedule in situations where the shackles of manufacturing hours are no longer necessary.

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