Sometimes you need some extra cash...

If you frown upon the idea of our public space being sold to advertising, you’ll surely find this utterly disagreeable:
In times when the lack of regulation of the financial sector has arguably been the major catalyst of a global economic crisis which in turn has driven dramatic funding cuts in our public sector (education, health, welfare, local councils, etc.), it is precisely a high-interest loans company who sponsors London’s usual free-travel night on New Year’s Eve this year.
Transport for London and the Mayor of London must have agreed that there is nothing wrong with this.

This is London, I think containing a sigh, a city that sells its soul to the best bid.

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Wonga.com: Sometimes you need some extra cash...
Wood Green Station (LU)
London

"There is more to life than increasing its speed"

This poster is part of a wider project called ‘What is the city but the people?’ undertaken by Art on the Underground, the official arts program of London Underground, whose aim is to engage with the public by presenting contemporary art in the Tube.

The project ‘What is the city but the people?’ gravitated on a booklet of the same title compiling famous quotes; the title itself being a line from a Shakespearean tragedy.
The booklet was passed on to train drivers for them to read to customers through the trains’ PA system. The point being, I guess, to raise a smile and even some philosophical questions among the Tube’s passengers.

Pleasant as it is to be greeted by the Mahatma’s wisdom and encouraged to smile –and maybe to think too– for a purpose different of buying, the Tube’s sponsored art initiatives are inescapably that: sponsored. Thus, to some extent they are subject to London Underground’s agendas and will always work to create a positive view of the Tube amongst its customers; lo, the cause of marketing.

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Art on the Underground: "There is more to life than increasing its speed"
Wood Green Underground Station

Cool Japan. Fusion with tradition

Same campaign as on the previous year [see 2009 related post], but the so typical geishas are now replaced by the also typical Shibuya crossing in Tokyo, a distinctive landmark of the imagined Japanese cityscape, as fair a representation of real Tokyo –and by extension of Japan too– as Piccadilly Circus is of London and Britain and Times Square of New York City and the USA, this is, not really a fair representation at all.
However, most often this ‘fairness’ does not concern tourism much: tourism seems to be less about truth than about fantasy; more about dreams than about being awake. One could say that ordinary people have plenty of truth in their usual lives (although this is of course very debatable), so when they ‘dress’ as tourists they rather do it in pursue of fantasy, not truth. Maybe too broad a simplification and a generalisation, I admit, but I think the point is made. Fantasy can be packaged and sold in commercial denominations; truth is just a trickier thing, not what one’s most likely to find in the realm of advertising.

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JNTO: Cool Japan. Fusion with tradition
Leicester Square Station (LU)
London

Walk Oman. The soul of Arabia

How likely would one be to find the soul of Europe by visiting the Alps?
How likely is tourism to deliver us souls of any sort?
Why might we want to chase souls in any case?

By pressing the button of the exotic spell, I know the ad probably gets what it aims to. But come on, this is the 21st century already: "The soul of Arabia"!? What's that?

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Oman Air: Walk Oman. The soul of Arabia
Russell Square Station
London

Cool Japan. Fusion with tradition

The Japan National Tourism Organization, the Japanese governmental institution behind this ad, knows well how much geishas are liked over here, that’s why it’s geishas they give us.

How many tourist brochures, articles in travel magazines, guidebooks on Japan, covers of Japanese novels, souvenirs, etc., feature images of geishas! And yet, how few actual geishas will average Japanese people ever encounter in their lives these days.
But, hey, geishas are a well-established symbol, widespread, recognisable and unmistakeable; in many readers’ minds ‘geisha’ (or maiko, or for that matter any girl dressed in a fancy kimono) = Japan; quite a temptation for advertisers. At the same time, it is worth noting that the symbol ‘geisha’ renders a particularly exotic, erotic and feminising representation of its object, i.e. Japan, with all the discursive implications involved in such process (on which I won’t go about here).

This said, these geisha girls in the picture do not seem very serious geishas to me; one could think they might actually be just posing as geishas, playing at being geishas, phoney geishas; they are geishas with a twist. And I reckon such twist must be close to what this “cool Japan” brand is all about. “Fusion with tradition”, they say. Rather, I’d say, a re-invention of that tradition; recycling with a marketing agenda; ‘tradition’ reshaped to fit around the commodity mould.

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JNTO: Cool Japan. Fusion with tradition
Waterloo Station (LU)
London