Premiere Generation Ink. 7

Interview with Naomi Klein (page 3 of 4)
by: Yogesh Chawla and Sachin Pandya

This interview is available free of charge, however we encourage you to support PGI by purchasing this issue, subscribing, or you can also donate to the Fences and Windows Fund. We are a volunteer run organization so we depend on your support to continue.

NK: Because the workers were going to walk across the police line, they (the artists) produced these Plexiglas shields. They covered them with huge blown-up photographs of the women working. So the women were holding these Plexiglas shields with photographs of themselves working at their sewing machines. It was very powerful, because of course all these women wanted to do was work.

It also meant that if the police were going to beat them-which in the end they did do, there was a very strong repression-that they were going to have to create this media spectacle where they attacked people working, which is very powerful. They would actually have to attack the photographs. And in a country where you have more than 50% of the population below the poverty line, that is the absolute worst thing that you can do. Because work is sacred now, because you need it so badly.

So those are just a few examples of how artists I know are marrying, sort of bringing a sense of aesthetics and creativity in play, but really being very practical. You know it’s just not enough to decorate the protests-the idea is to be functional and useful.

YC: It also kind of turns the notion of power on its head—fighting water cannons with squirt guns, or firing teddy bears into protests. I also find it interesting when you talk about Argentina because I spent a year living there. But I was on the other side of the fence, I was working for Merrill Lynch. We really don’t want to get into that. I am a good guy now.

SP: It was a dark time.

NK: I’ll take your word for it.

SP: On the flip side of getting art involved in the movement, one of the things that I think about is the way that corporations have seized upon the anti-capitalist message-used some of the techniques and injected them into their own ad campaigns, their own brands. I know you have written about some examples of the Gap spray-painting "Independence" on their own windows, or video games like "State of Emergency," where you get to be an anarchist and attack the police.

SP: How do you see that happening and what, as activists and artists, can we do in terms of language to prevent them from co-opting our message? What are some types of speech that they can’t get after?

NK: Once again, I don’t feel 100% up on it because I have been outside of North America. Although this was an issue in Argentina, after what I guess is called the Popular Rebellion on the 19th and 20th of 2001-when you saw hundreds of thousands of people pour into the streets, and they successfully overthrew the government.

The symbol of those protests, the brand if you will, was the pot, because people were banging pots and pans. It was this wonderfully democratic form of resistance, because it wasn’t the usual loudspeaker and people following in columns, which is the way politics is often done, particularly in that country. Everybody who had a pot-and of course everyone has a pot and a spoon- was a full actor in that moment. They were creating this noise. It was actually completely non-verbal. It was this roaring sound of rejection. But when I got to Buenos Aires a month after those protests, on the cover of Elle magazine was this beautiful, emaciated model wearing this little skimpy cocktail dress with pots hanging from it. It took a month to get on the cover of Elle as cacerolazo chic (ed. note: cacerolazo is a form of protest involving the banging of pots and pans). And people there-I think rightfully -completely ignored it because it was so inconsequential. I think when you have a live political movement that is really talking about profound political change to the economy and to the political elite, it doesn’t really matter whether it ends up being kind of co-opted in a cell phone ad. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

I think in North America this project-I’m talking about the marketing project-was interrupted by September 11th. I think it’s only just restarting now. I think that a lot of the companies that were going in this route-sort of hyper alternative anti-corporate advertising-were very much spooked by September 11th, and immediately wrapped themselves in the American Flag. That’s what’s in the window of a Gap now. I think that some of these companies continued in this direction more in Europe. But in North America, they’re producing videos where you get to be the North American G.I., not the activist.

YC: It’s on the Army web site.

SP: Right, the Army has released a video game where you can go around and practice shooting people.

NK: Right, so I’m not sure that this is that much of an issue at the moment, although there’s always going to be a few examples. And I’ve personally experienced this in rather disturbing ways since No Logo was published, because I decided against the wishes of my publisher not to trademark "No Logo," the phrase. What’s happened to me is that a few businesses have gone and trademarked it.

YC: Isn’t there a "No Logo" clothing company?

NK: Yeah, there’s a shoe company in Italy now, and a food company and a cell phone company. A lot of money is being made, and it looks exactly the way it’s designed on the cover of my book. And it’s frustrating for me because I actually get e-mail from people who say that they think I’ve produced products. That does bother me. But the alternative would be doing exactly what I argue against in the book, which is trying to own ideas and keep them from spreading. Which is exactly the opposite of what most activists want. You want ideas to spread.

SP: You’ve become kind of the public face of the global justice movement, or at least one of the spokespeople-one of the things that has been raised, and you’ve spoken to a bit.

Outside of these people co-opting No Logo, there is sort of a brand-the look and style of your books, and also the global justice movement as a whole. Is this something that you worry about? Do you think of going off in a different direction to subvert your own brand? Do you think that having a brand is a bad thing for the movement?

NK: I do worry about it a lot, actually, and I do try to subvert my own brand in various ways. I think that for a long time I really didn’t see that it was happening. I thought it was being used by the right wing press as a way to discredit the book, because every interview I did a journalist would go "But you’re your own brand," as a way of saying "Okay, we don’t have to listen to your arguments." But I do think that it has happened. And it’s happened because this is an extraordinarily diverse movement of movements that I’m involved in-it’s really hard for media types to digest and understand. And I think that in many ways that’s what makes it strong and resistant to the types of co-optation we’ve been talking about.

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