As works of art become product placements, the effect of diminishing
resources and corporate dominance which emphasizes its own survival,
therefore prodding the survival instinct in people, stifles even the
ambition to look beyond onesself, to place onesself in the universe,
to wonder. A corporation never inspired a person to do anything.
Except in the sense of negative inspiration, as a lightning rod for
protest. But since the 60s corporations have long recognized this,
and coopted the protest by borrowing its trappings, aestheticizing it,
mainstreaming it and therefore marginalizing it. They have quite successfully folded protest, environmentalism etc into realm of consumerism and the consummate infantilization the individual human being.
It must be recognized that corporations are here to stay as our civilization now
cannot work without them. It is a question of changing the cultural,
perhaps with the model of a corporation that survives by appealing to
an awareness of the need for coexistence, and that this race to the
bottom will only in end in our destruction. It’s a matter of creating
an emblem in a corporation that makes the typical corporation of today
look bad. And moreover, one that thrives economically. Is this
possible…