Buying In portraits Street culture

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I’ve just been on a trip around the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa; countries that are defined as ‘developing’ but, in reality, are culturally streaks ahead - for my next book, The Stuff You Can’t Bottle, which goes inside the world of youth advertising. Apart from all the wicked creativity going on out there, one of the things I discovered was that culture and consumption have become intertwined. And this got me thinking about emerging culture in such a different way.

When the interesting stuff happens, it’s spontaneous. The rest of the world isn’t party to what’s going down. Instead, only a select coterie of people – true pioneers – get to see, smell, taste and hear the kind of culture that exists at grassroots. The public may luck out and accidentally discover what’s happening; some will get involved, others will criticise, and the really good stuff will gently simmer underground.

Before the internet took over the world, that’s how things worked; culture spread by word-of-mouth, passed like folklore between people who didn’t just watch from a distance, but were actively contributing in a hands-on way. They were deejays, designers, musicians, skaters, doers, makers, believers. That was how movements started, often born out of hardship or in reaction to something or someone: Rave culture in 1988, for example, was a direct reaction to the right-wing selfish society that Thatcher spawned.

But nowadays, there’s a huge white elephant in the room; people are often under the illusion that they’re part of something cultural, when in fact what they’re actually doing - and this is the vital point - is confusing consumption with culture. Just because you order a book from Amazon, buy a T-shirt emblazoned with a stencil of an audio cassette, luck out and get a ‘LTD’ edition pair of sneakers (that have been mass-produced in their 100,000s), you may well think that you’re part of something, but all you’re really doing is consuming a thing that’s been fed to you. It’s no more or less meaningful than wearing a badge, or pressing ‘like’ on someone’s Facebook page.

And we’re all guilty of it; we’ve all felt the joy of slipping on a new pair of rare-as-fuck Nikes and feeling like we suddenly ‘belong’. It’s become almost second nature to buy into a movement that is seen as cool. In many ways, buying shit has become an integral part of the culture we live, sleep, eat and breathe. And it’s not our fault; the line between consumption and culture has become so blurred, it’s easy to feel confused.

Now throw in the large corporations behind every youth brand and that’s when things really get complicated. On my travels I witnessed what can only be described as truly spontaneous, unpremeditated and - dare I say it - authentic culture: stuff you won’t see on the internet - people and movements that remain hidden. But here’s the rub: now that I’m typing this up and choosing to share the things that I stumbled upon through the pages of a magazine - a platform supported by advertising – I’m helping expose these undocumented scenes to a brand-obsessed world. As a vehicle for under-the-radar stories, we’re complicit in the co-optation of all things good. Unwittingly, we package subcultures in a way that looks appealing to ad men.

And as soon as that happens, it’s game over. It’s just a matter of time before a career-hungry grom in his inner-city ad agency spots whoever/whatever we’re talking about – sees some homemade video on YouTube, or a few scribblings on a blog - and is hit by an epiphany. “I know,” he’ll say. “All I have to do is latch brand X onto scene Y and the kids will go nuts for it and start buying all this shit!”

The internet is a fucking brilliant thing, but in my jaded opinion it’s also a terrible thing. Yes, some talented kid in Outer Mongolia can get recognised and not die unknown (if, perhaps, still penniless). On the other hand, anyone can publish their work, no matter how disingenuous or misinformed, without proving themselves to their community first.

Many believe capitalism cannot be stopped; money makes the world go round, right? But does our cultural consumption have to come with a price tag? Can’t we ‘consume’ culture without turning talent into a commodity - into experiences that only money can buy? Street culture plays such a huge part in selling stuff to the youth, it’s hard to decipher the real deal from the carbon copy. Than again: what does ‘authenticity’ really even mean, anyway? Who’s to say that Tyler the Creator is any more ‘real’ than Sir Cliff Richard? And what happens when a brand jumps onto a movement? Does it kill it or does it help to spread the word, albeit attached to a logo?

This is something I have spent the last fifteen years trying to figure out. Full disclosure: as a former creative director in advertising, brands still ask me to introduce them to fresh young talent around the world. Sometimes I hook up them, if it feels like a situation where everyone wins. But over the years, these experiences have just made me more aware of the strange predator-prey relationship that corporations have with the cultures they want a piece of.

Today, I spend my days working as a writer, hunting for those little nuggets of culture sparkling in the gutter, searching out content that is free from commercial ties and trying to reassure myself that it still exists. How do I know when I see something real? All I’ve got is my gut reaction.

There is nothing more exciting than cultural movements that exist for no other reason than because it feels right. I’m talking raves, skate jams, anonymous graffiti tags, rap battles on a corner; reggae, punk, grunge, Teds, rockers, Mods, yada yada yo.

Next time around, I will introduce some of the talent I’ve met along the way who believe it’s enough to do things ‘just because’.

DJ Olga Maximova on her NES iphone, just before a performance in Arbat Street, the Moscow equivalent of Oxford Street.

SoWeTo skate kid rocking the township style woolly hat.

Artist Va$hte gets her decaf on in downtown Jo'burg

Local Sao Paulo skatepark was rammed full of skaters, from lighties having lessons to this downhill master. No fuss, no bother, no nothing: just skating. One love.

There were a ton of girls rocking glasses with no lenses in Shanghai.

Ear decoration in the world's biggest skatepark, The SMP, in Shanghai.

Sheik rickshaw driver with his pop idol sticker. Dodging busses and lorries in Vasant Vihir, a posh suburb of Delhi.

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Buying In portraits (text) by King Adz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.