Notes
1 This and the rest of the quotes from the exchange between Obrist and Douglas come from HERO (2019).
2 A “gopnik” is a derogatory term used to refer to person from a lower-class background mainly in Russia, Eastern Europe, and ex-Soviet Republics, particularly one who is perceived as lacking in education or refinement; it is the approximate equivalent of the English “chav.”
3 It can be regarded as a subfield of luxury fashion distinct from its more traditional manifestations, in say Prada, Hermes, or Luis Vuitton, brands which coalesce around the signifier of “elegance” (this will be discussed later on in more detail).
4 The YouTube user Bobby B made the following comment on the page of the performance: “What a joke—rich kids posing as artists, posing as musicians doing big corporations collabs in the disguise of “fashion”. Artists need to transcend this capitalistic shit, we don’t need another rehash of the rock star.” www.yout ube.com/watch?v=AkAXumBqwcc
5 To put this in Marxist terms, this staging of an underground spectacle as part of the brand’s DNA exemplifies a transition from formal subsumption to real subsumption in the field of culture, where in the former, the capital takes command of processes originating outside or prior to it, such as in the commodification of subcultural styles (e.g., grafiti), while in the latter, capital organizes the production process internally so that subculture materializes after its own image.
6 Narcissism refers to an “exaggerated admiration for oneself, particularly for personal appearance”, ironic detachment to a “stratagem for concealing one’s feelings by suggesting their opposite” and hedonism to something more than the pleasant, tending toward “the worldly, adventurous and even orgiastic” (Pountain and Robins, 2000: 154).
7 Coolness developed from being both an attitude and style related first to black and then youth subcultures in the Anglo-American world and became gradually a global signifier to commodity culture, design, and advertising (as in the marketing practice of coolhunting). Coolness is not a quality fixed in entities, but a fluid condition related to the people’s judgments about these entities and, indeed, a condition primarily pertaining to the development of capitalism and commodity culture. It also difers from milieus to milieus as well as from time to time—what was cool yesterday may be kitsch now and what is kitsch now may be cool in the future. While Dick Pountain and David Robins speak about the “cool” as part of a personality type or attitude, I would like here, following Jim McGuigan, to see coolness as a fundamental aspect of commodity culture that in turn shapes social interaction around which identities, relations and desiring investments are performed (2015).
8 We should stress here that this is a process related to the development of capitalism and its techno-social relations rather than generated by a single individual; apart from Andy Warhol as a flesh and blood person, when I speak about “Warhol”,
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