Putting the home and the self under the hammer. Pt. I

Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. - David Foster Wallace

Feel real good stories
There is a big market for things that 'Make You Feel Real Good'. From early on a release of happiness hormones: Endorphins, dopamine and serotonin allows one to experience a rush of comfort. In a media environment of daily bad news, 'Happy News Stories' and feel good narratives give one a warm heart or an Orwellian  'bellyfeel'. Even the official Australian Bureau of Statistics is "putting on a big pair of rose tinted glasses" about inequality in Australia and "is crafting  a 'good story'".

Bellingen is a small town presented as a "bohemian town that is heaven on earth". Nestled near the Promised Land in pristine rainforest, it "is so abundantly verdant and fruitful; it literally drips with milk and honey. It's a place so special the fortunate locals...call it home." A vibrant community of artisans, artists and farmers live in "the prettiest town of New South Wales." (source)

Graffiti as advertisement?

Growth: The 'Sky's the limit'
Every place is aiming to get a slice of the fastest growing economic sector in the world, the tourist market. (pdf) N.Y., Paris, Venice, Bali, big or small, all engage in place marketing in a very competitive world market to attract more visitors. The growth imperative is the driving force. Despite knowing about  'The Limits to Growth' for many decades, the all-powerful paradigm of economic growth at all costs has become a 'mental infrastructure' by now. Habitual 'business as usual' and territorial expansion set the tracks for seemingly unending revenue streams.

Place marketing
'Putting the place on the map', or visibility in the attention economy is achieved by advertising campaigns. Branding, e.g. ' I ❤ NY', or copycat  'I love Bellingen Shire' should give the site a unique stamp. Merchants and designers are hawking the 'spirit of the place' in noisy PR campaigns. Iconography helps the designers to 'burn' 'iconic images' of locations into our minds.  This reputation management is aims to grab our attention, shape perceptions and win the 'hearts and minds' of prospective visitors and investors.

Hear the good news about the shire
In a setting of rural ghost towns and cheap flights small towns have to 'spin a lot of yarn' in order to be heard in the global cacophony. With the devolution of government and the free fall of regional and local news outlets, some councils resort to taking things into their own hands with the help of ratepayer fees. Bundaberg Council for example has a free 'good news' website to showcase their shire. Mainstream local media sees its market share withering even further and call it "propaganda masquerading as news". (source)

We are open for business
Various stakeholders curate contemporary conscious sense making tools to relay their message.  Economic chambers and councils release their corporate communication slogans, mission and vision statements.  In a nutshell: "We are open for business". Corporate and local storytelling usually entails founder stories, local heroes and impeccable goods and services. The added value of emotional bonds and mind shares appears participatory: 'we are all in the same boat'.

The good news conversation
Attempts are made to facilitate a mutual dialogue on social media and other means with ‘homo narrans’ to boost popularity. Both corporate bodies and local government aim to tightly control the 'conversation'  to strengthen the corporate brand and the public–private partnership. The stories, brand, image, culture and identity are tightly orchestrated in the hands of these agents. The “who we are and what we stand for” engages feelings and appeals to emotional bonds. Negative stories are a no-go zone, unless of course they could assist in gaining more funding. Real estate, the service industry the culture and leisure industry as well as the primary sector are fully behind an expanding market. This 'business ontology' is a global phenomenon. (Mark Fisher, 2009)

Locals as ambassadors for the Bellingen or Byron Bay brand
Locals also express their identity and pride of place via public storytelling on multimedia. 'I Love Bello Shire' pledges abound with beautiful jolly people in a "Happy Place". Dream locations of the mum-and-dad-type investors offer short-term rentals that are circumventing regulated hotel accommodation. Happy selfies with sunsets of residents and visitors alike are selling the dream. All join in the choir of hippie-surfer-wellness alternative-lifestyle destinations song.  Pampered bodies and psyches are cocooning themselves in the comfort zone of the 'Bellingen Bubble'. Enterprising mumpreneurs sell an idealised instagrammable lifestyle. The home and family life becomes a cash cow. Dollhouses with housekeepers demonstrate that the slow-living, laid-back magazine lifestyle of white affluenza is possible for all. As a Byron Bay resident puts it: "I know I live in this absurd white privileged bubble".
Other trendsetters, such as influencers also endorse the dolce vita lifestyle, locations and cultural identity via the Dark Social. It is the labour of a staged cultural authenticity, of an imagined community which is to be consumed by tourists and locals alike. Credibility is also achieved by citing celebrities or noteworthy people who live or have lived in the area.


Experience: One wants what one wants
City refugees seek to escape the rat race and congestion of city life and immerse themselves in the "willing suspension of disbelief“ (S.T. Coleridge). Getting away from it all promises to be free of care, taking a vacation from responsibilities.  The offer of family amusements funnel the groups, declared to be consumers, to offers of consumption. The hunger for new sensations, preferably curated experiences, is insatiable. They are pampered by a precariat that is un(der)paid in an unregulated service industry.  Entertainment is performed by 'authentic' song and dance events. The self enhancement in  'joycamps' often constitutes a prolongation of work.

Hominid and their best best friend on holiday

Mimicry
The imagination and practices of the tourist or recreational consumer are always in-formed and pre-figured by what others do, say or post as text or media.  The must see, must do, must do a selfie there is established in a structure of social expectations. A hunger is cultured for holiday locations that are 'hot' on social media, company brochures or TV programmes - the actual location is secondary.  The shared images trigger a reaction to travel to that specific location.  "Based on their photos I'm really willing to come here." They are snap-happy on semi-automatic. Travellers are eager to complete must-do lists of must-see locations before 'kicking the bucket'.  The Earth becomes a mere passe-partout for yet another selfie in mass society.  In the end everyone demonstrates their belonging, their habitus of consumption. The 'I wuz here' - pictorial graffiti literally leaves one's mark on the world and on the other minds. The gaze of the Other sets off a new mimetic chain reaction in language, thoughts and actions in the world.

Putting the home and the self under the hammer Pt. II 



Links:
The Coast of Utopia, Carina Chocano,Vanity Fair 2.7.2019 (Byron Bay)
Mental Infrastructures: How Growth Entered the World and Our Souls , Harald Welzer, 2011
Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson, 1983

Updates:
Been to Dubai lately? It’s a city where top-down placemaking serves its political masters, Julian Bolleter, The Conversation, 6.3.2020

Street art or graffiti: The erasure of a glossy tourist trap via the obliteration of made-for-social-media murals is an inherently radical reclamation of public space. Particularly in a city that has actively commodified this environment and uses it as a means to promote the cultural identity of Melbourne as a tourist destination for those wanting to experience “creative ambience”. The Guardian, 12022020

Bellingen Shire Branding Project 2020 - 2021 

'Bellingen Shire branding strategy' in action, Bellingen Courier, 6.2.2021


Images:
1 Graffiti, EU
2 'Graffiti', Bellingen, NSW
3 One Market Place, Manly, Sydney
4 Buy things - poster, Berlin, de
5 Hominid and their best best friend, street art, Berlin, de
6 Poster, EU

 

The Bush: Travels in the Mind of Australia, inspired by Don Watson

Some thoughts inspired by Don Watson, interviewed by The World Today at @SydWriters'Fest on soundcloud. His latest book: The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia, Penguin Australia. (2014)

First there is the outstanding and unbelievable voracious appetite for destruction of all things Australian by European colonialisation. To 'wipe it all away' in this newly established British colony, also known as the 'blank slate' of Terra nullius. Proceeding with the 'business as usual' expansionist progress paradigm, all endemic flora and fauna had to disappear. The indigenous owners of the land "felt the full force of Australian colonial brutality" (source). The inflexible aliens found themselves in an alien land and strained to recreate their place of origin that they were habituated to.

The amazing point is not only 'the scale of destruction', but its perpetual continuation right into 21st century contemporary society and landscape. 'The Great Australian Silence' permeates and it is coupled with an inability to confront reality. The mental state is one of oscillating between learning disability and ‘intentional ignorance’, commonly known as denial.

The long list of inconvenient truths about climate disruption, massacres of indigenous people, land degradation and biodiversity impoverishment are overwhelming.

The mind manufactures defense mechanisms for a required state of permanent 'feel good' existence. A delusional unwillingness to face reality is coupled with a melancholy across generations. Like a social transgenerational epigenentics the uncleared deeds of the past linger in the minds of the present. Existence in rural and sub-urban isolation, bereft of meaning, populates the minds with roaming packs of 'black dogs': mental illness, depression and suicide. The others busy themselves with Anglo pragmatism to get things done by recreating the status quo.

A bit of bush lore, Aussie 'nature' (45,000 years of Aboriginal land stewardship) or #wildoz add to the pride and puffs up the chest. Most of the time one is propelled by fossil fuel machines, racing through the paved bush at 100 km/h.

Isolation also molded the psyche of national insecurity, stuck on an island in the Asian Pacific region. Sliding from a democracy without a bill of rights into an oligopoly of vested interests. A withering sovereign state replaced by (semi-) private instrumentalities.



'The bush' is still clear felled in the country, native vegetation is bulldozed and residents of the major cities seem to hunger for tree free cities (10/50) to go with the diy heatwaves. The majority of Australians huddle in cities, mostly along the coast. The bush is still unknown to most. It is a place to dump the weedy garden clippings, fly-tipping or empty the dogs.

The mind is caged by fence posts.


Images:
Henri Rousseau,  La Femme en rouge dans le forêt, (detail),1886
Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1808


Listen:
After a lot of laughter and giggling, the audience demands 'something positive'! at the end of the interview...