Brooklyn Brothers Brainfood - November 2010

IDENTIFYING
THEMES

DRIVERS THEME BEHAVIOURS
(causes) (area of energy) (cultural examples)

CULTURE CREATES ENERGIES THAT BUILD
AND EVOLVE OVER TIME

WOMEN
ROCK WATCHING ME,
WATCHING YOU

CULT OF DONORS
LESS ME ME ME WANTED

PARENTS
GET ME OUT OF HERE
RULE

Women in Control In both Britain and the US, female artists are outdoing men and dominating the pop charts like
never before.

The Gentlewoman Magazine The Gentlewoman is a new biannual style magazine for a new decade. Featuring inspirational,
international women, it pairs ambitious journalism with a sartorial and intelligent perspective
on fashion that is focused on personal style – the way women actually look, think and dress.

WAH Nails WAH Nails is a Dalston based nail salon opened in August 2009 by Sharmadean Reid.
“It’s taken off because it’s completely different to anything else out there, from the pictures we
have on walls, to the magazines we have on the shelves, to the music we play, to the nails we
do. It’s popular because people want something new and individual.” “I have never thought of
myself as a brand as such, but I am well aware that my life helps sell the nails which is why I
still have a blog.”

Shoreditch Sisters Shoreditch based W.I group dedicated to craft, fun and social activities in a modern feminist
context. Jazz Domino Holly is the founder and president of the Shoreditch Sisters Women’s
Institute, who since their formation in 2007 have generated media attention as the forerunners
of urban renewal and the craft based revival.

Daggenham / Winter’s Bone/ There is a new generation of female filmmakers operating outside the big studios.
In the last year, three ‘indie’ films from female directors have been a box office hit.
Kathryn Bigelow / Sofia Coppola ‘Winters Bone’ - Devra Granik, Made in Dagenham
‘Hurt Locker’ - Kathryn Bigelow (first oscar given to female director)
Somewhere by Sofia Coppola will be released March 2011.

Exposed at Tate Modern ‘Exposed’ was a recent major exhibition at the Tate Modern curated around the theme
of surveillance. As the most surveyed country in the world, Britain has an obsession with
voyeurism, privacy laws, freedom of media, and surveillance. The show included work from both
amateur and press photographers, and images produced using automatic technology such as
CCTV and Google Street View.

Shizuka Yokomizo - Stranger Yokomizo wrote anonymously to strangers asking if the recipient would stand at a particular
window, alone, for 10 minutes with the lights on, at a specific time of night so that she could
photograph them from the street. If they did not wish to participate they could close their
curtains, while if they chose to open the door to meet her, the photograph would not be used.
The participants must remain strangers.

Trevor Paglan - Black Spots In the USA, a number of classified military bases and installations are located in sites so remote
that there is nowhere on Earth where a civilian might be able to see them with an unaided eye.
Paglan uses high-powered optics, originally developed for astronomy and astrophotography,
to visualise the invisible by transforming the military ‘black sights’ into a physical photographs.

Michael Wolf - Paris Street View In ‘Paris Street View’, Wolf uses Google street view’s technology to avoid recreating cliches of
a city famous for its iconic photographs. By creating photographs of photographs and adding
a contemporary layer of symbols on top of old ones, Wolf was able to produce an alternative
view of a city that has changed so little over the years.

Street with a View Street With A View was an artistic intervention created by Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley in
May 2008. It introduced fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of
Google Street View. The Google Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside
were invited to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. They staged scenes
ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a seventeenth century sword fight.

6 items or less Shopping diets have become popular, whether it be not buying any clothes for a year or
restricting what we wear. What do our clothes say about us? Why do we spend so much time
on what we wear? 6 Items or Less is a global experiement examining the power of what we
don’t wear.

The Uniform Project The aim of the Uniform Project was to evolutionise the way people perceive ethical fashion and
place social responsibility at the center of consumer culture. Their aim was to use fashion as
a vehicle to make acts of charity more inspired and playful, enabling individuals to rise as role
models of style, sustainability and social consciousness.

Supermarket Sarah Sarah decided to leave the corporate world behind her and has set up shop in her own home.
Her home, round the corner from Portobello Market where she has a stall, is now overflowing
with treasures and delights and she welcomes visitors with tea and cakes.

Having kids later on No legal age for fertility treatment in the UK has seen a rise of 55% in over 50s giving birth.

Hollywood embracing IVF and sperm donation In the last year Hollywood has mined the subject of IVF and donor babies to create funny
and touching stories about the evolution of the modern family.

School of Life The School of Life is a new social enterprise offering good ideas for everyday living. They address
issues such as as why work is often unfulfilling, why relationships can be so challenging, why
it’s ever harder to stay calm and what one could do to try to change the world for the better.
The School of Life is a place where you can step back from life and address these concerns.

Feast of Strangers Artificial insemination for friendships. “The great characteristic of our time is social isolation.”
Theodore Zeldin. We only know people in the same situations as yourself, we are isolated
by our professions and our education. Reaction to the ‘individualisation’ of society through
entertainment – tv and the internet.

Marina Abromovic For ‘The Artists is Present’, performance artists Marina Abromovich sat silent and motionless
on a wooden chair, inside a circle of light, in the huge atrium of MOMA, seven hours a day for
two and a half months. She then invited anyone to sit opposite her for as long as they wished
on agreement that they would stay motionless and silent.

Mappiness Researchers at the LSE have tapped into smartphone technology to take stock of people’s
mood swings and compile a daily “emotion index” of the nation. It has been described as
revolutionary, the best method so far devised for understanding how people’s emotions are
affected by the buildings and natural environment in which they move.

Ashley Madison Affair Agency Toronto-based Ashley Madison Affair Agency recently came to light for infuriating marriage
counselling charities with its shocking billboard in Old Street, which features the slogan: ‘You
invented infidelity. We perfected it! They claim to have 7 million members worldwide. They
recently asked Chilean miner Yonni Barrios $100,000 to become the new face of Ashley
Madison.

Buried / 127 Hours In the last year, Hollywood has launched a number of films about being trapped.

Lebanon / Sanctum In the last year, Hollywood has launched a number of films about being trapped.

Parent Trip - George Lamb A show on ITV2 about celebrities taking their parents on a life changing trip.

Mumpreneurs Having a baby used to spell the end of ambition. Now entrepreneurs are proving it’s the best
time to start a business. Recently there has been a week-long focus on mumpreneurs on
ITV1’s breakfast programme, DayBreak.

MATT’S BLOG:
THE CULTURAL JACKDAW

Brooklyn Brothers Brainfood - November 2010

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Brooklyn Brothers Brainfood - November 2010