
 

Marketing Reality

	
A project by J.P.Kruse

The project.

Philosophy and art have in common that they can form a reflection of our present times and can help us to orientate ourselves in the world that we live in. In our times both philosophy and art are confronted with two omnipresent forces that alter the ways in which such reflection can take place.

Marketing

As Andy Warhol highlighted with his ‘Factory’, the border between art, advertising and industrial production has been blurred to the extent that one could ask if such distinctions are still meaningful. The universal acid of marketing has corroded every single institution of the Western world – the state; the church; university; art; philosophy – in the struggle for their existence they now all need to obey the laws of marketing. Meaning needs to be sold in order to survive.

The Internet - Information Technology

The internet, or more generically: information-technology, aims to reduce our physical, social and psychological surroundings to digital content in order to realise an ideal, virtual world where everything is immediately accessible for anyone at anytime. The current multi-medial paradigm seems to dictate that an audience needs to be triggered by different media at a time in order to hold their attention, which has grown accustomed to such triggering. But - do not both philosophy and art require attention? To which extent can this attention be divided and still lead to a meaningful experience? When does divided attention simply become mere distraction? Can distraction still be art, or philosophy?

These two omnipresent and omnipotent forces cannot be denied by both philosophers and artists who aim to confront themselves and their audience with the world that surrounds us.
Is reflection still possible in a world where meaning is a product and attention is equal to permanent distraction?
‘Marketing Reality’ stands for a multi-medial exposition where 7 selected artists from different disciplines are invited to interpret these urgent philosophical questions, which are systematically discussed in an original contemporary philosophical essay by J.P. Kruse “The American Age” that will form the philosophical blueprint of this exposition.
.
The artists will be selected from the following categories:

1) Installation Art
2) Graphic Design
3) Contemporary Dance
4) Photography
5) Performance - art
6) Music
7) Virtual Art

To underline the notion of how reality in general and art in particular is transformed into content one of the 7 artists, from the ‘Virtual Art’ category, will be invited to use the contribution of the 6 other artists and the aforementioned essay as content for his/her contribution, as a remix, synthesis or mash-up of these contributions, which will thereby represent most prominently of all contributions the a priori of modern technology as the portal to all phenomena as content.

The aim

“Marketing Reality” aims to invite the public to participate in a multi-medial reflection about marketing and information-technology. The core idea behind the multi-medial approach is that a reflection of actual themes should actually reflect these themes – both in content as in form. Where Western Philosophy has imprisoned itself in its dominant medium – the written word – this exhibition aims to cross the boundaries between philosophy and art.

Execution

As the live-performances (categories 3,5,6) cannot be ‘exhibited’ permanently they need to be restricted to predetermined hours. Depending on the possibilities of the location these ‘live’ elements can either take place in different spaces or on different hours/days. It could be considered to invite several artists for each of the aforementioned categories to create a rotating schedule to ensure the daily presence of different ‘live’ elements, without the artists having to be present every day.
In this stage no decisions can be made on the duration, location and budget of the exhibition, these decisions will naturally depend on partners, sponsors, and funding.

Selection of the artists

The initiator and the collaborating party will decide together on the selection of the artists. Apart from criteria as coherence, originality and vision, an affinity of the artists with the aforementioned themes, either explicitly or implicitly present in their previous work, will be decisive in the selection process. The artists will be asked to read the essay prior to their proposal and specify their focus in their proposal.
In this stage the initiator can propose several artists with whom he worked on previous projects, which he thinks are suitable. Further orientation will take place in dialogue with the collaborating party.


About the initiator

J.P.Kruse - Jacob Arch
(Philosopher/Musician)

Jacob Peter Kruse is an independent philosopher and artist currently living in Berlin. He studied philosophy at Leiden University, where he taught academic skills for two years and obtained his master’s degree in 2006. 
His philosophical research focuses on the nature of ideas. More specifically, it aims to formulate an answer the question: What is the reality of ideas? Kruse proposes to understand ideas as patterns of attention. These patterns of attention are understood as being neither identical to- nor independent from the media we can use to evoke and sustain them. His research could be characterized as a revisiting of Plato’s intuitions informed by thinkers as Bergson, Heidegger and McLuhan.
After obtaining his master’s degree, J.P. Kruse continued his career as an independent musician, releasing 4 albums of original compositions to date, and has continued his work as a philosopher outside the academic context by creating his own courses in philosophy and initiating and collaborating on several crossover projects which aimed to integrate philosophy in an artistic and contemporary context.
In 2010 he realized the multidisciplinary project ‘Episodes’, for which ten artists were invited to contribute a work inspired by the music and the lyrics of one the ten songs from the music album ‘Episodes’. The result was shown in the form of an exhibition at the Gallery Victoria Kovalenchikova (Amsterdam), where the art works were exhibited and the visitors, by means of headphones, could listen to the song that matched the work of art, and could read the lyrics, that were printed on text panels. With this unique form of presentation the visitors found themselves in the centre of three different expressions of the same 'episode' and were invited as an interpreter to participate in these episodes.
Currently he is working on a project with the working title ‘Marketing Reality’, an interactive exposition that will be based on the themes of his philosophical essay on contemporary culture: “The American Age & The Virtual Age”. Artists from different disciplines will be invited to confront themselves with the two dominant themes of this essay: marketing and information technology. 
The aforementioned essay will be published in May 2014, by Swamp Lantern Books, an independent publishing house based in Vancouver (Canada). The official presentation will take place on the 30th of May in Kulturschöpfer, a platform for contemporary culture in Berlin.

For more information:
Philosophy
www.jpkruse.com
info@jpkruse.com
  
Music
jacobarch.bandcamp.com

Philosophy:                         Music
www.jpkruse.com               jacobarch.bandcamp.com
info@jpkruse.com              jacobarch@live.nl


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Jacob Arch