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ART BACK OTHER PROJECTS NEWS CONTACT CV TEXT

Other Art Projects:

The Bull Laid Bear
ReMake Estate

Pemulwuy Dream Team
Treat (or Trick)
Emeraldtown, Gary Indiana
The Focus Group
Glass Half Full
Jumps and Surprises
What Would it
Mean to Win?

When you set out to
change the world...

Drawings
Cites Without Maps -
Kota Tanpa Peta



The Focus Group

Video, 7 min, DVD, PAL by Zanny Begg
Camera Conrad Barrett and Zanny Begg, Sound Christian Malejka, Starring Andy, Sumu, Janine, Katrina, Rachel, Osama and Bruce Petty

Edward Bernay, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, is famous for an essay which founded the art of public relations: “The Engineering of Consent”. The publication of this article enacted a transfer from uncle to nephew, from psychology to advertising, shifting the focus from consciousness to the connection between it, and one’s wallet.

The Global Financial Crisis highlights some of the persistent problems with capitalist economics yet in the discourse surrounding the recent crisis little reference has been made to its traditional counter-part: socialism. As Bernay might point out socialism clearly has a PR issue.

But could we rebrand socialism? The Focus Group is a tongue in cheek look at the possibilities of revolution in the twenty-first century by using a focus group with self-professed revolutionaries to come up with a marketing campaign for socialism. Of course the joke is a double edged sword – poking fun not only at the unmarketable nature of socialism but also the manipulative and coercive nature of marketing itself.

The Focus Group explores the problems of even dreaming of an alternative to the branded world we live in.

Exhibited at Proposals for a Socialist Colony, Skydive, Texas, 2010 and The Sharjah Biennale, United Arab Emirates, 2011.

Review in Critics Picks, Artforum, May, 2010
Review in Artlies, Cynthia Coffeild, May 2010


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