An Apple A Day...

Our project was a mixture of collaborative and autonomous work. Our initial brainstorm produced some incredibly creative and in-depth ways to express the concept of 'what if objects could speak?'. In the end, the one idea that really spoke to all of us was the concept of creating an alternative universe in which apples, being our chosen object, were conscious beings, using humans to propagate their species. Allan Kaprow once said, 'The playground for experimental art is ordinary life,' (2003). I guess we wanted to draw on this concept, experimenting in creating an 'ordinary life' for apples. I think in the end what we came up with was probably more than ordinary if we're being completely realistic, but given that it was a performance there was no doubt there had to be some humour injected in there. Kaprow may not have considered our piece to be particularly experimental, but then again there's only so much one can accomplish in a week. From there, it was simply a matter of finding the best, and most entertaining way to present this to an audience. Performance seemed to be the only answer. We went through the pages of history, and decided that if apples could talk they would probably do so in the way humans do, through news.

The propaganda poster was really where it all came together for me, personally. The phrase “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” was raised during our initial brainstorm when discussing apples throughout popular culture and everyday life. What if the apples were akin to parasites, keeping their population alive through hosts, aka humans. They would wonder how they could keep humans continually eating apples, and create this concept that apples are good for us and persuade the humans to eat the apples of their own choosing, and adopting the 'an apple a day' phrase as a survival motto – thus completing their circle of life. We certainly got philosophical about this topic.

The immediate response to an exercise like this in my mind, however, was to draw on Yoko Ono's event-score (2004). Perhaps we could also recreate some of the activities that Ono dreamt up; we could light a match in the middle of the class and all watch as it goes out; we could send a collective smell to the moon; we could draw a map to get lost; we could even stir the inside of our brains with a penis until things are mixed well, and then take a walk. But of course, after closer inspection, within our time limit we were not creative or experimental enough to make any of this relate to apples. Perhaps we could make our own event-score? But we were all set on the idea of our apple world and giving the class a glimpse of it. Which for the task at hand, worked better in the end. Then there was the matter of presenting an inspirational speech from an apple dictator - which was where human history came in handy – and a news report, including an apple expert discussing the history of apples, to showcase it through.

"An Apple a Day Keeps The Doctor Away" 

Our apple propaganda.

The poster certainly turned out more 'adorably ferocious' than the original 'fear-inducing' visualisation I had in mind. But the message still certainly comes across in a powerful way. I modelled the format on old-fashioned propaganda posters, that had certainly been effective in our past. The popular colours used, red and yellowed-white, fortuitously fit perfectly with our apple theme. While searching the internet for a template, I came across an advertisement for M&M's chocolates asking the public to vote for their favourite colour M&M (Clemenger BBDO, 2008). Not traditional propaganda in any sense, but this poster showing the 'Red' M&M with his fist in the air and commanding some sort of red army was the perfect model given the M&M's similarity to an apple appearance-wise. In the beginning I had not planned on turning the centrepiece apple into a character. I felt that would humanise it too much (and we had been attributing a lot of human traits to our apples already). But drafts of the poster had turned out dull and personality-less otherwise. The spikes gathering to the centre, aka the Rising Sun, were a critical component of the propaganda aspect, if only in the sense that it's an image that society recognises as representing propaganda. It draws the eye directly to the centre, allowing the viewer to be fully persuaded by the message being presented by the ferocious apple. And in conjunction with our banter-filled news report, informative flowchart and inspirational speech, I think we have definitely given our chosen object, the humble apple, a voice.

REFERENCE LIST:

Kaprow, A (2003), 'Just Doing', in J Kelley (e.d) Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, exp. Edition, University of California Press: Los Angeles, London, pp. 247 – 251.

Ono, Y (2004), Pamplemousse, Les Editions Textuel: Paris.

The Redolution is now, 2008, ClemengerBBDO, Melbourne, Australia.