Art work – followthethings.com

“How To Run A Subvertisement Workshop“
A subvertisement workshop designed by Eeva Kemppainen for Eettisen kaupan puolesta ry (Pro Ethical Trade Finland).
Workshop video embedded above. ‘How to’ booklets available to download in Finnish here and English here. Eeva’s project blog is here. An archive of subvertisements produced by students can be found on Flick here. This page was originally published on the followthethings.com blog here.

Eeva Kemppainen took the ‘Geographies of material culture’ module that’s behind our site as an Erasmus student, did her Masters research at the University of Helsinki on the pedagogy she had experienced in the module and went on to work for the pro-Fair Trade NGO Eettisen kaupan puolesta (a.k.a. Eetti) in Helsinki. In 2014, she published a paper in the Finnish journal Natura (here) about ways in which her work for Eetti tried to engage students in humorous critiques of consumption and advertising through a pedagogy of culture jamming. In 2016 Eetti published Eeva’s booklet Medialukutaitoa vastamainoksista (also published in English as Teaching media literacy and the geographies of consumption) which set out how to run culture jamming workshops – like the one in the video above – and showcased the kinds of work that students produced. The booklet drew inspiration from a number of examples of trade justice culture jamming from the followthethings.com website. What can students examine, then cut up, rearrange and/or scribble on magazine adverts? They try to subvert advertising’s messages so that the information that is hidden – including the lives of the people who make what’s being advertised – is made visible. What they produce are called ‘subvertisments’. In this post, Eeva describes how she organises these workshops, and showcases some of the work that students can produce.

Page reference: Eeva Kemppainen (2015) How To Run A Subvertisemeht Workshop. followthethings.com/how-t-run-a-subvertisement-workshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes.

Posted on December 20, 2024January 8, 2025 by Ian Cook

Gravesend, 2007

followthethings.com
Electronics

SORCED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

MAKE IT A MYSTERY

MAKE IT INCOMPLETE

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL

“Gravesend, 2007“
An art work / short film by Steve McQueen premiered at the Venice Biennale and exhibited at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, USA in 2007 and at the Uneven Geographies exhibition at the Nottingham Contemporary Gallery, UK in 2010.
Gallery photo above. Renaissance Society exhibition photos here. Acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA here. Not available to watch online.

After a decade of rare earth metal mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for use in the growing consumer electronics sector, and recognising the history of African colonial plunder artist Steve McQueen sets out to make a short film that brings this story into one piece of art work. He travels between the coltan mines of the DRC and a coltan processing facilities in the UK. The miners, sometimes children, dig coltan from muddy trenches. This is brutal and poorly paid work wrecks the environment and funds a civil war in which 4 million people have lost their lives. The specialist metals which emerge from this ravaged place are perfect ingredients for modern consumer electronics, because they can conduct electricity without getting too hot. McQueen visits a pristine, computerised factory facility in the UK where this coltan ore is processed. The film he makes out of these loaded and shockingly different elements is described by critics and viewers as abstract, poetic, animated (sometimes), deafeningly loud (sometimes), beautiful, intense, opaque, meditative, melancholy, that works though ‘phenomenological estrangement’, has no titles or narration and scenes and moods that leap between places and dissolve into one another. The coltan miners appear in it as ‘ghostly absences of light’. For McQueen, this isn’t a documentary film. It doesn’t give supply chain workers a voice. It’s a film about looking. It takes its name from a town in the British county of Kent, which sits on the banks of the River Thames where Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness book begins. You can only watch it in an art gallery when it’s being exhibited. Some commenter are impressed with its intellectual purpose and depth, while others say they need to read the museum brochure to understand what it’s about (e.g. coltan). It seems from what people say that this isn’t an activist film or art work. It’s not setting out to motivate its viewers to understand and to act. But it is, for some, intensely haunting. Maybe you have to be there, watching it in that gallery space, with other people, other art work, the signage, the space, the lighting. This is a space where its viewers to ‘make the necessary connections.’

Page reference: Tom Bollands, Alistair Brouard, Amelia Cozon, James Hornsby, Phoebe Park & Louise Richardson (2024) Gravesend, 2007. followthethings.com/gravesend.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

Posted on December 17, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Sim*Sweatshop

followthethings.com
Sport & Fitness

2006

UNBRANDED

SPORTS SHOES

MADE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

“Sim*Sweatshop“
An online video game by Jonny Norridge (concept and game programming) & Gavin Courtney (back end development) for NOW Nottingham and The Arts Council UK.
Gameplay video by WahWahQueenMew embedded above. Available to play free of charge on the Sim*Sweatshop website here (Adobe Flash needed).

Designer Jonny Norridge creates a game to simulate the experience of the shoe factory work that he’s been reading about. You slide shoe panels into place with your mouse. It ‘pings’ when one’s made. Then you make the next one. The clock ticks. Your energy levels fall. Your pay is terrible. It’s not enough to buy the food that you and your family need. You are interrupted by your boss talking about targets. He doesn’t like it when you want to join a union. It’s a simple, repetitive game that you – as a factory worker – can’t win. The idea is to put gamers in the shoes of the people who make the things that they buy. For them, there’s a familiar task sequence and reward structure. But this is real. It’s kind of fun to play, but also sucks. It’s the kind of game that’s given to school students as a quick and vivid way to explain sweatshop production. If they hate it, the lesson has worked. For those who want to know more, its website suggests further reading. There are other examples of trade justice activism in which consumers go to work in the factories and farms where their things are made (see, for example, the TV series Blood, Sweat & Takeaways on our site here). With these, you’re invited to empathise with someone supposedly like you – the contestants are often pitched ‘as typical’ consumers – trying to do that work. In this game, you’re all doing it yourself. So how effectively can a game-based simulation of factory work can be? What can it convey of the poverty and working conditions of show factory workers? It turn out that the answer is ‘a lot’. Sim*Sweatshop catches on. German and Hungarian versions are created, and it becomes part of other mainstream anti-sweatshop campaigns. But are young consumers the ones responsible for these sweatshop conditions? Should company executives, investors and politicians be playing this game too?

Page reference: Declan Coakley, Jack Johnson, Josh Li, Georgie Mitchell, Jack Saxton & Tom Weake (2024) Pipe Trouble. followthethings.com/sim-sweatshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

Posted on December 12, 2024January 8, 2025 by Mark

A Global Positioning System

followthethings.com
Electronics | Home & Auto

2006

UNBRANDED

GPS NAVIGATION ASSISTANT

SOURCED IN THE PHILIPPINES

SOURCED IN SOUTH KOREA

SOURCED IN SOUTH AFRICA

SOURCED IN ANGOLA

SOURCED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

TAKE IT TO PIECES

TRACK & TRACE

FOLLOW THE THING

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“A Global Positioning System“
A art work / animated film created by Melanie Jackson, first exhibited at the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, UK.
Two screengrabs from the film are featured above. Watch it in full on the artist’s website here.

If you’re interested in finding out who makes your stuff, it’s important to make a strategic choice about what stuff is best to follow. Artist Melanie Jackson makes an excellent choice – what better to guide your way than the technology that helps to guide your way. An in-car GPS Navigation Assistant. The kind of device you could buy in the 2000s to stick to your dashboard. Type in the destination, and it would help you on your way, showing the route on screen. She gets some funding for a trip to China to visit a factory where they are assembled. But this isn’t anything like enough of the story of this thing. She looks into its in many many ingredients, and finds out where and by whom they are sourced. She reads news stories, collects photographs, and turn to drawing to bring all of these connections together into a 12 minute animated film. There’s something magical about animation. It’s obvious that animation is not an objective account of the life of a thing, but something that’s been imagined and made. Animation allows the complexities of trade to be conveyed in a way that would otherwise be impossible either because the scale of the task would be too enormous, or because permission would not be granted to access the industrial sites that matter. There’s a powerful argument that’s made about ‘follow the thing’ research that things can be – for these reasons – ‘unfollowable (see Hulme 2017). But animation – and other creative approaches to thing-following (click the ‘make the hidden visible’ tactic button) – provide means to work around this. This is a mind-blowing film. Its amazing what you can learn in 12 minutes!

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A Global Positioning System. followthethings.com/a-global-positioning-system.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

Posted on November 20, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

MILKproject

MILKproject website homepage
MILKproject installation at the local museum in Rumbini, Latvia.

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Grocery

SOLD IN THE NETHERLANDS

MULTIMEDIA ARTWORK

POP THE BUBBLE

FLIP THE SCRIPT

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

TAKE IT TO PIECES

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“MILK“
A locative art-mapping project by Esther Polak & Ieva Auzina
Images above are of the MILKproject website homepage and of the MILK installation at the local museum in Rumbini, Latvia. Project website here.

The Milk Project literally follows a thing. It tracks milk from the cow’s udder to the cheese vendor using GPS trackers which record its geograophical location multiple times a second. The devices are given to people in the supply chain, so their movements are also being tracked. Those who have already handled on the milk, and those who are waiting for it (not to mention the partners of those who have it in the moment) can track its movements in real time. This is a locative media art work which also includes photography, storytelling and other methods that make this more than something that traces a line on a map. These supply chain workers can see their lives, and the commodities in which they trades as live, as xcrossinhg borders, as connected. For some artists and activists, GPS technology is the enemy. It’s an abstraction from the world. A tool of capitalist exploitation. But, in this project, it’s helps to paint a surprising intimate portrait of lives connected through trade: in real time for the participants, on the project website and on the rare occasions when it’s exhibited. The project gets caught up in debates about actor networks that are swirling at the time, but the artist and researcher who made see it more as an artwork about landscape. You can’t experience its liveliness now. The website animations don’t work because Adobe Flash was discontinued in 2020 [you may have a fix]. The installations were complicated top set up. The in-the-moment experience for the particpants was the most powerful. A lot has been written about it though. What’s been said?

Page reference: Elizabeth Karin & Anna Whitehouse-Lewis (2024) MILKproject. followthethings.com/milk.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 29 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Banksy’s Slave Labour

followthethings.com
Home & Auto | Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

POP THE BUBBLE

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

BE A CELEBRITY

START WITH A PARADOX

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

MAKE IT FAMILIAR

MOBILISE THE FANDOM

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“Banksy’s Slave Labour“
Street art by Banksy briefly located on the wall of a Poundland Store in Wood Green, London.
Removed.

It’s 2012. Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee is being celebrated in the UK. The London Olympics are also taking place. There’s Union Jack bunting everywhere. It’s cheaply and readily available in discount stores like Poundland. Including one in Peckham, South London. Where the street artist Banksy paints a mural of a child hunched over a sewing machine, making them in India. They spill onto the pavement. It’s a true story. But, like most of Banksy’s street art, it’s quickly stolen and auctioned on the international art market. The story goes viral. That’s usually what trade justice activists want. But that viral story isn’t about slave labour at all. Is the international market for celebrity street art, and the value of Banksy’s work within it, an effective channel to persuade retailers like Poundland to remove child labour from their supply chains?

Page reference: Lydia Dean, Lucinda Armstrong, Jessica Bains-Lovering, Emily Hill, Harriet Allen & Rose Cirant-Carr (2019) Banksy’s Slave Labour (taster). http://followthethings.com/banksy-slave-labour.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Cries For Help Found In Primark Clothes (a.k.a. ‘Labelgate’)

Label found by Rebecca Jones
Label found by Rebecca Gallagher
Letter found by Karen Wisinska

followthethings.com
Fashion

“Cries For Help Found In Primark Clothes (a.k.a. ‘Labelgate’)”
Social media posts by Rebecca Jones, Rebecca Gallagher, and Amnesty International Northern Ireland.
Label photos originally posted online embedded above.

Shoppers Rebecca Jones and Rebecca Gallagher find an extra label in dresses they buy from Primark stores in South Wales. One says ‘Forced to work exhausting hours’, the other ‘Degrading sweatshop conditions’. Belfast shopper Karen Wisinska then finds a letter in the pocket of some Primark shorts. It’s written in Chinese, but starts ‘SOS! SOS! SOS!’. It seems to be a coincidence. Rebecca, Rebecca and Karen post them online to share what they have found with their friends and followers. Their posts set off an international ‘whodunnit?’ which makes the national news and ties the company’s PR department in knots. Are they genuine? Are they mischief-making of an artist or activist? Either way, is what they say true?

Will Kelleher & Ian Cook (2014) Cries for help found in Primark clothes (a.k.a. ‘labelgate’). followthethings.com/cries-for-help-found-in-primark-clothes.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 93 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Homeland

followthethings.com
Home & Auto

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

TAKE IT TO PIECES

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“Homeland“
A social art work created by Dan Gretton, John Jordan, & James Marriott of Platform London, funded by Arts Council England, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, London Arts, London Borough Grants Committee, Paperback & Rex.
No longer available from the App Store

There’s a lot of social tension about immigration in the UK in the 1990s. So a group of arts-activists called Platform invites Londoners into the back of a truck for conversations about their lives and how their city is lit. Its lightbulbs have been manufactured in Hungary, the tungsten for their filaments was mined in Portugal, and the coal firing the power stations providing their electricity was mined in Wales. Their argument is that, if London’s global sense place is created by such border-crossing commodities, Londoners could appreciate its border-crossing people too? So what happens in the back of that truck? What conversations take place? How does Platform measure its effectiveness? At followthethings.com we love this example. It’s one of the earliest examples we can find of this kind of arts-activism, and it’s fascinating to learn that one of Platform’s most famous fans at the time of Homeland was Professor Doreen Massey, the author of the (1991) ‘Global Sense of Place’ article that has influenced so many culture-crossing thing-followers since that time. We love it when trade justice activism and geographical theorisations of relationality come together like this.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Homeland. followthethings.com/homeland.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.

Label found by Rebecca Jones

Label found by Rebecca Gallagher

Letter found by Karen Wisinska