commodity – followthethings.com

“B’eau Pal Water“
A spoof commodity-based activist campaign created by the Yes Men and the Bhopal Medical Appeal.
Video playlist embedded above posted on YouTube by the Bhopal Medical Appeal.

It’s the 25th anniversary of the Union Carbide chemical factory explosion in Bhopal, India. It’s the worst industrial accident in history. 3,700 people died immediately. Between 8,000 and 25,000 people had died since. And up to 200,000 were permanently injured and countless more continued to be affected by the leaching of toxic chemicals into the water table. Still, the factory’s owners (Dow Chemical, who bought Union Carbide) refuse to pay compensation. So the Bhopal Medical Appeal get together with pranksters the Yes Men to design a new brand of bottled water. It’s a mineral water. B’eau Pal Water. A taste of Bhopal. “Bottled at source”, they say. Presented in a beautifully designed bottle. The Yes Men travel to Dow’s UK HQ to challenge its executives to drink it, just as Bhopal residents have for the past 25 years. When they arrive, the building is empty. Why won’t they drink this? When they offer it to passing members of the public , everyone understandably refuses once they know what’s in it. So is this campaign a success? Does it draw renewed attention to this long-running scandal? Is it OK that what they’re doing is ridiculous, funny, and that people are disgusted but also laughing about this prank? The Bhopal explosion wasn’t funny. So is this prank in poor taste? Is it offensive? Or can its humour embarrass Dow and bring the Bhopal factory explosion back into the news cycle? Can offering people a fancy bottle of toxic mineral water that they would never drink bring them closer to the people living in Bhopal who have no choice but to drink it? What’s the logical response to this? What has to happen to make this situation right? This bottled water later becomes a potent symbol of the compensation campaign at the 2012 London Olympics – where Dow is a corporate sponsor and a Bhopal survivor challenges the chair of its organising committee to drink it – and in Bhopal itself, when the victims and their families invite the Indian politicians and scientific advisors who had dismissed their complaints about contamination to a buffet of toxic delicacies including bottled B’eau Pal Water.

Page reference: Jack Parkin (2018) B’eau Pal Water. followthethings.com/beau-pal-water.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

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

The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself

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Health & Beauty

2014

UNBRANDED

HEART PACEMAKER

MINED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

REDESIGN THE COMMODITY

ENCOURAGE THANKFULNESS

“The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself“
Undergraduate coursework made and recorded by Jennifer Hart
Images of the pacemaker and packaging submitted is in the slideshow above, the song is embedded below.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Exeter is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and what properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming’ it. Student Jennifer Hart feels guilty about the conflict minerals in her mobile phone. Then she finds that the heart pacemaker her mum is having fitted also contains those minerals. It’s a lifesaving operation. How can she reconcile her mum’s suffering and that of these minerals’ miners? How best can she express her feelings about this technological object? By making a pacemaker that knows what she knows, feels what she feels, and can sing about it. A pacemaker that can express a huge thank you.

Page reference: Jennifer Hart, J. (2014) The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself. followthethings.com/pacemaker.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated listening & reading time: 10 minutes.

Posted on September 2, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt

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Fashion

MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CROWDFUND YOUR WORK

HAVE IT MADE

MAKE IT META

“Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt“
A podcast series, webdoc & YouTube playlist in NPR’s ‘Planet Money’ series produced by Alex Blumberg.
YouTube playlist embedded above. Listen to the Podcast series here. Visit the webdoc here. Visit the NPR store here.

The USA National Public Radio’s ‘Planet Money’ plans a series of programmes on the international cotton industry, from seed to t-shirt. But they’re not interested in investigating who makes K-Mart or Walmart or H&M t-shirts. Instead, they launch a kickstarter campaign. If enough people pledge $25, their reporters will travel the world to find out who makes a T-shirt that they commission. This means that they can talk directly to farmers, factory owners, workers, shippers and others involed in bringing that shirt to the market. If they find stories of environmental or labour exploitation, it’s their own brand that will be damaged. 25,000 are made. Each features a squirrel hoisting a martini glass (a jokey reference to what economist John Maynard Keynes referred to as capitalism’s ‘animal spirits’). Each pledger was sent a t-shirt as a reward for their investment. Other people could buy one from NPR’s online store.

Page reference: Emelia Price, Steph Small, Sophie Blakstand, Maisie Jenyon, Catt Suttie, Hannah Cookson, Laura Johnston & Abigail Spink (2025) Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt (taster). followthethings.com/planet-money-makes-a-t-shirt.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on August 19, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

followthethings.com Shopping Bag

followthethings.com
My shopping bag

2011

FOLLOWTHETHINGS.COM

REUSABLE SHOPPING BAG

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

“followthethings.com Shopping Bag“
A limited edition run of 5,000 reusable plastic shopping bags designed by Daisy Livingston & Aidan Waller and distributed freely to support the launch of the followthethings.com website.
The last bag was given away in 2016. Still in circulation.

The followthethings.com launch team are keen to create some merchandise to promote their website. Intern Daisy had submitted a printed cotton bag she had had manufactured in China as coursework for Ian’s ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module. It was the most original, imaginative coursework he had ever seen. That’s because it wasn’t just about the geographies of material culture, it embodied them, materialised them. Ian hired Daisy as an intern and asked her to design and order some reusable shopping bags for followthethings.com’s launch. Fellow intern Aiden helped out. These needed to be just like the ones that we used for our supermarket shopping at Sainsbury’s, Tesco, ASDA, Morrisons. They were pretty standard in their construction. But where were they made? From what materials? How could you find out? What could you find out about the pay and conditions of the people who made them? Quite a bit, it turned out, if you had your own made in the same places. What insights could this privileged business-to-business customer perspective provide? And what could happen after you put these mischievous shopping bags into circulation? Especially when the meaning of ‘shopping’ in the project – and on the bags – was double: i.e. both ‘to seek or examine goods, property, etc. offered for sale in or by’ and ‘to behave treacherously toward; inform on; betray’ or ‘to give away information about’ those goods, property, etc. (Anon nd). Once you read about our bag, you can apply its lessons to the ones that you have…

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) followthethings.com Shopping Bags. followthethings.com/followthethings-com-shopping bag.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 21 minutes.