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Slogans for the 21 st Century take a standardised office environment as a visual source in order to present statements that make a commentary on the social impact, mental one in particular, on our day to day lives. Coupland suggests a possibility of dealing with the situation mentally- with this information overload - be able to laugh about and think deeply about the issue at the same time. The project reportedly is referred to as `thought provoking` The latest edition of the project that responds to Covid-19 Crisis feels feels most relevant as we are experiencing this particular situation now.

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Coupland does not attach a specific meaning to the colors he uses for the backgrounds of the slogans, however he uses office posters as a general visual format. The purpose of these statements in bold, often imposed over bright backgrounds is similar to the kind posters being hung in public areas of an office to motivate employees as well as to help them to destress in a pressured environment- to change their perception of it from that being filled with obstacles to that of unlimited possibilities. They remove that mind block in a similar way as Copeland`s slogans do, ultimately reducing a feeling of stress about the situation, or the environment, the Outer World.  

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One of the most significant statements of the artist in relation to this project and my own understanding of an approach to writing  is 

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`Life is not about essays`

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The way i understood it is, that due to the information overload in order for the text to be perceived and make a person to stop and look, catch their attention, it needs to be boiled down to shorter chapters, up to even slogans.The information needs to be to the point to be able to be digested quickly. 

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Coupland says in one of the interviews: too much has happened too quickly in the past two decades and this generation did not have time to process the situation fully, which leads to stress.

 

`The Slogans are a great litmus for letting us know how quickly our world is changing.`

 

` Slogans are about super-reductive thinking which also delivers an a-ha moment. A good slogan tells people that they’re not alone in having the freaky internal responses to the modern world: we’re all going through this together.`

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Another statement is: 

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`I miss my pre- internet brain`.

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Here Coupland talks about internet as something that physically affects the brain, for me it is relevant as a therapist when remembering my clients and people around me expressing that feeling of heaviness in their head, between their temples from the overload of a screen time 

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Another example that shows that awareness in Copeland`s thinking of a an effect of the information overload on how we relate to our bodies and the natural processes, for instance being irritated by them, as well as our tendency to factualise everything to the detail  is this little snippet of the artist`s Transmedial talk in Canadian Embassy, Berlin in 2014 

 

`There is an unusual situation where there is a hair growing sideways in my left nostril and its driving me crazy... that is called too much information` 

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`When did we invent future and how much of this acceleration can we actually take?`

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This is an excerpt from a podcast with a radio station that was focusing on the project.Here Copeland expresses that we are struggling to live in a moment nowadays and have a tendency to want to plan everything far ahead, different to people even 20 years ago. 

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Left and Right: Screenshots from a promotional trailer for the 24/7 exhibition at Somerset House, left one features one of the slogans by Douglas Coupland that is also a part of a series exhibited at the same exhibition physically mounted on a wall as a poster, the right one includes the title of the exhibition and a visual reference to an Instagram story. This video was shared on Somerset House`s Youtube channel and Instagram account. The reason these are signifficant in discussing the context of my work is that they represent how brain and therefore mind is overloaded, stressed by addiction to phone and influence of Instagram on connection with others.

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Above: screenshots of Douglas Coupland`s Instagram feed with the latest slogans responding to a Covid-19 related lockdown as i have encountered them on my Iphone. 

 

Seeing them displayed like this in a form of  a feed gave me an idea for the format of the arrangement of my statements, only those would cover different parts of the body. Here Coupland uses a social platform that people use as a comfort during a social isolation to talk about the issue that is disturbing in a light way, redeeming it that way but also further commenting on the consumerism and loneliness as a state of mind. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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he correlation between Coupland`s practice and mine is that we merge fine art with writing, the two disciplines, that is very importantly combined with us putting the issue of current urban lifestyle `everything happens too fast,we consume a lot  and we are overloaded with it.WE are obsessed with WI-FI and a quick connection to the point where we can not be present in the real time`.

 

We both use live  conversations that happen around us in regards to this topic as a source for the text, however Coupland puts it in prose and speaks with statements that sound like facts that sometimes are put in to a fictional setting that is likely in a current time ` A One-Way Trip To Mars With Smoking Hot Wifi Is Actually Ok`. This more of a facts approach comes from the artist`s background as a writer of scientific fiction such as Generation X and it is natural to him. He uses humour a lot that I took on in my work as a means of a psychological relief from more of a therapeutic point of view. I think its just the artist`s natural style and the willingness to laugh at the obsurdity of the time deprivation and consumerism in general that we got ourselves into as a generation as well as stating a fact of a change, making a social comment.

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I,on the other hand, employ poetry as a form. The content for my text conceptually comes from the same wider context `fast paced urban lifestyle`, however i focus on how the brain overload and time deprivation leads to stresses in certain parts of the body. I aim to create visceral connection for the audience with the certain parts of their body in order to point out the issue and potentially achieve a physiological relief of that area through releaving mind. While Coupland in `Slogans For The 21 st Century` does not consider specific colour backgrounds, just in general choosing bright colours to echo the aesthetic of the ones put out in the office my approach is intentional. In my final piece proposal, for instance, specifically selected 9 shades of lavender to gradate from the most dense to much lighter gradually to reflect the density of tension and stress getting lighter as the `weight gets lifted of the head` through mind getting freed via the text therapy that i guide the viewer through.  The slogans in the final piece are interconnected forming a `narrative` of how tension travels from the bottom to the top and where it is deposited as well as which activities attributed to a fast paced lifestyle cause it.It follows the Yoga Nidra principle. The color of the font is also purposeful as they reflect the colors of the chakras that are thought to be located in certain parts of the body such as chest- solar plexus-yellow. Coupland, on the other hand, uses bold all caps black font with all of the slogans following more a uniform repetitive office aesthetic.  

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