Subliminal Art-Vertising
Romain Laurent is a French photographer who is emblematic of a new trend in Corporate marketing, advertising and sales promotion. By employing artistic components of visual art, essentially for print and video media, companies can better position the brand by employing the viral media platforms and reaching the important demographic associated with it. Although subliminal advertising is banned in both Canada and the United States, its presentation is ambiguously embedded, almost integral to the spirit of the modern multinational.
Laurent is on contract with some of the largest ad agencies such as TBWA and Young & Rubican to create content to Coca Cola, Epson, Nissan, Microsoft among others. Subliminal messages are registrations of information that pass under the radar of the normal limits of the minds perception. In effect, ”zombie” modules that could be activated in the future and are designed to alter behavior in some way, though generally in a more benign range of actions such as consuming a good or service that is not essential.
Nonetheless, the the use of subliminal advertising represents a form of secular manipulation and indoctrination with significant cultural implication. They induce a sense of homogeneity and narrow the cultural playing field which is economically more viable than diversity. Whereas religion can press the ”fear” lever to keep the flock, the corporate world acts as a secular religion to scare the consumer into the arms of consumption and accumulation. Its the dialectic of attraction and repulsion at play and upon some reflection, ambivalence.
The modern multinational is able to co-opt any new social movement into its public relations in much the same manner as the Pope will manipulate the content of his encyclicals to the zeitgeist of the times.
Laurent is a gifted photographer capable of surrealistic, vibrant humour. He is a master of Photoshop editing and manipulation to a level where he can be considered more a digital artist or a ”photoshopper”.The viewer is presented with digital photo manipulation collaged over a second corporative marketing apparatus which is a layer of archaeological proportions over an additional vague form of mixed intentions too deep to excavate.
Laurent’s sketches of surreal chaos are too contrived to be considered authentic which ultimately makes them repetitive, derivative and sterile. Behind the clever presentation, there are themes of bondage, terrorism, theft, bestiality, hoarding, dismemberment and other fear factors prevalent in these representations.
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