My Occupy Wall Street post for NAR, based on my senior thesis.
http://www.northwesternartreview.org/home/2012/05/14/occupy-wall-street-citizen-facility/
As numerous journalists have pointed out, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), a
movement that continues to morph and unfold today, operates under a
brand. This “brand” was created by Adbusters, a Canadian culture jamming
publication that purchased the domain name occupywallst.org and created
the Twitter hashtag #OCCUPYWALLST months in advance of the physical
occupation.
Although critics are veracious in aligning the movement’s strategies
with social media and corporate advertising, the fundamental objective
of marketing—profit—is absent from Occupy. Without a commercial product
or service, Occupy’s brand has been able to flourish in a variety of
ways. Most notably, it has sanctioned a viral enterprise of citizen
production.
At the end of March, I had the opportunity to visit New York and
witness the ongoing movement firsthand. The occupation had moved to
Union Square the weekend I arrived, a new locale through which a diverse
array of people pass, allowing for a wider breadth of passersby than
what Zuccotti Park offered. Each day, the square buzzed with liveliness
and excitement, unhindered by the perimeter of baton-equipped NYPD
officers surrounding the park. Food prepared by former Sheraton chef
Eric Smith was served each evening, with the NYC General Assembly
scheduled to meet shortly thereafter.
What struck me the most, however, was the myriad ephemera that
circulated within and around the park. Tables around the park featured
handbills, zines, buttons, and more. The Occupied Wall Street Journal, a citizen-run newspaper that appropriates and reconfigures the financial district’s iconic Wall Street Journal,
was also available for people to take. When I asked how Occupy printed
such a substantial supply of distributive material, an occupier
explained to me that a group called Occupress handled most of the print
production. Occupress, which is run by everyday citizens, is only one of
a throng of “affinity groups” that have emerged under the Occupy
umbrella. Other affinity groups include Occupy Design, Occupy Together,
How To Occupy, and many more. Each of these unofficial groups has formed
under the helm of citizens and now command crucial space within the
movement, operating under separate domain names and hashtags, but
ultimately referring back to one another, as well as the overarching
Occupy movement. The aesthetic language produced by this exchange is one
of community and conversation, as well as instability, for the nature
of social media and digital encoding is inherently mutable.
Composite screenshot of the OccupyDesign.org, HowtoOccupy.org,
and OccupyTogether.org affinity group websites. The text highlighted in
purple demonstrates the association between affinity groups
Screenshot of a small section of OccupyDesign.org’s graphics gallery, as of April 21, 2012.
The latitude of Occupy’s spread is well-visualized in the online
archive of affinity group Occupy Design (occupydesign.org). Its hundreds
of graphics, which are continually multiplying and thus regularly
altering the contents of each page, reflects the unfeasibility of
assigning a single image or aspiration to the movement. The visual
capacity of Occupy exists in such a proliferating manner that it is
nearly impossible to characterize beyond the shared production of
citizenry. It is an aesthetic dialogue that relies on grassroots
participation to thrive—and thrive it has.
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