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for temporary brands. During these events, it was possible
to live “Just do it” as a personal affirmation.
Among these occurrences can be cited the famous
“Nikepark”, the “Nike-Event space” on the grounds of
the former world youth stadium, the “Bezirksbattle”
(for which a number of football teams were created in
various neighbourhoods with the cooperation of the
school authorities), sports training for the young in
problem areas such as Kreuzberg and, lastly, the “Show
your Freestyle” campaign which was extended to the
whole of Germany.
As a result of the these events, the Nike brand has not
only become an urban player but also one of its creators.
In Berlin, the firm (like other brands), plays the
role of sponsor, partner and promoter for various trendsetting
subculture scenes. Nike is also trying, and
increasingly frequently, to get involved via “concealed
operations” in the cultural source code of the target
group: “on stage: young persons up to 35 years of age”.
Discreet initiatives such as the opening of a temporary
club in the heart of Berlin (Presto-Lounge) or the highly
publicised attempt to use the Republic Palace as a temporary
Nike-Eventspace with club managers and artists
drawn from the Berlin sub-culture, are just some of
these events.
These trends are not the last ones to fundamentally call
into question the romantic image of the consumer as a
“subversive smart guy”. Has the smart guy changed his
priorities and become a collaborator, a docile assistant
for global marketing? Have metropolises such as Berlin
and London been transformed into oversized laboratories
of lifestyles and trends, large-scale experiments
for fashion and trend setters, serving the needs of subcultures
and marketing strategists? Has the subculture,
like the progressive shift in relations between production
and consumption, become a “voluntary”
adjunct of global marketing.
The town of the future, a playground for brands
Niketowns can be considered as the starting point and
the organisational centre for action and initiatives by
the firm in its attempt to penetrate the mental structure
of the town. One supposes that lying behind this
attempt to encroach on the “mental map” is the fact
that the “Mainstream Paradise” is the dream of the
majority of the global middle-class, a paradise in which
directly consumable events are on offer, of constant
quality and enabling the construction of personal identities
to be constantly verified. Nike’s urban marketing
is equivalent therefore to an attempt to create
Niketowns as a fragment of Mainstream Paradise in
actual towns. For group strategists, urban space signifies
“event-oriented locations specific to brands”. In
this context, the Berlin marketing campaigns of Nike
acquire new cultural significance as they participate in
an avant-garde manner in creating a future “city of
brands”. During the campaign in support of the opening
of a Niketown in Berlin in 1999, other resources were
already available suggesting Niketown continuity.
Posters announced: “Stadiums: there are more of them
than you think. One of them is directly beneath this
poster.” It’s not just the Tauentzien sports shop that is
the real Niketown but the town as a whole. Welcome to
Niketown”.
“The great civilisation that is coming is going to create
situations and adventures” wrote international Lettrists
in 1954: “A science of life is possible”. The adventurer is
more someone who lets adventures happen than someone
to whom they happen. (...) The share of chance
events, what we refer to as destiny, is diminishing. For
that to happen, architecture, urbanism
and a powerful form of plastic expression,
the basis of which we already possess,
need to come together”. 1 Market
studies, trend studies, brandscaping –
brand enhancement, the creation of
specific group atmospheres, do they
contribute to a “science of life”? Nike’s
urban events, are they the “situations
and adventures, of a future civilisation?
Corporate Situationism –
Resistance or Affirmation?
The last utopias and rusing
If one applies the cliche of “situationism”
to the urban campaigns of Nike,
one ends up asking the question that
can emerge at the heart of the wider
concept of Niketown and the model of
the town “as a space for specific brand
events”: are we dealing, in the imaginary
Niketown, with an affirmative, but
now commercial satisfaction, of the
vision of a situationist town – the
Corporate-Situationist-Mainstream-
Paradise? 2
Nike’s urbanism has similarities not
only with a drastic critique of the town
but also with the emphatic model of
“another town for another life” argued
for by situationists. On the one hand,
the family of sports articles represents
the town as a regulated and defined
space and, on the other, it wants to
transform it into an event-oriented
space full of tensions. The imaginary
Niketown, as a production or simulation
of a better reality, reacts, specifically,
to each injustice of the modern
town, also pointed out by Debord and
his companions: an absence of
enchantment, of the unknown, of the
unpredictable. Areas for urban brands
can therefore step into every breach
empty of meaning that modern urbanism
has opened up in the town, dividing
it up functionally and eliminating everything
that is contemptible, incomprehensible
and dismal.
A Situationist town needs to be
marked by the emergence of surprise
events and by changes and constant
upheavals to dominant forces. Which is
why they wanted to replace functional
zoning by towns full of games and
adventure: “We want adventure. Some
people begin to look on the moon when
they cannot find it on earth. We, first of
all, and continuously, are looking for
change on this earth. Our project is to
create situations here – new situations.
We consider violating laws that prevent
the development of effective action in
our lives and culture. We are at the
beginning of a new age and are trying
to conjure up an image of a happy life
and a unified urbanism – urbanism for
pleasure.” 3
When Nike transforms an underground
tunnel into a ramp for skaters, and when one can play football or
basketball there, the legitimate rules of a rationally planned town
are called into question for a time – does this not correspond to a
suspension, a diversion in the strict meaning of the situationists?
And if that occurs not just in any subway station but in the one
under the Reichstag – after all the seat of legislative power – then
Nike shows how the town can be used in a way that is entirely similar
to that desired by the situationists. With one important difference
however: while the situationists were looking for liberty and
excess, corporate situationism specific to brands is looking for a
stable, controllable and consumable image of freedom. Nike’s
objective is not a form of free lifestyle but a marketing illusion 4
which in fact creates the opposite. And at the same time masks it. It
would seem that the global marketing agencies have learned something
from the promises of happiness that emerged from the artistic
movements of the 20 th century and various artistic and political
guerrilla movements. Niketowns as paradises for directed and controlled
exploration can in no way be considered carefully constructed
ruses.
Counter-current
The strategy of adapting expressive forms of protest culture is
today coming up against a certain amount of resistance to what is
perceived as an insidious monopolisation and transformation of
public areas by Nike and other firms, or at least a desire to affirm a
counter-current – but these aspirations are short lived for lack of
support and are increasingly pushed aside by marketing strategists
wanting to “turn the page”. Adidas has engaged the brand pirate
Ora-Ito as a product designer 5 and Nike has also tried to employ
artists from the Street-Art movement to create its advertising campaign.
6 What form do they take then these protest and guerrilla tactics
if marketing strategists themselves are guerrillas recruited by
Global Players?
Vienna at the beginning of autumn 2003. On the Karlsplatz is a Nike
container informing the public that the Karlsplatz is due to be
renamed “Nike Square” at the beginning of 2004 and that a
“Swoosh” sculpture 36 metres long is going to be erected there. An
Internet site presents this project with the title “Nikeground – Re-
Thinking Space” 7 , giving details and with perfect Nike aesthetics.
According to the Web page, all the major squares in 13 towns
throughout the world will no longer be commemorating the memory
of kings or dead generals but will carry the name of Nike. A defence
movement emerges to contest the scandalous announcement. A
few days after setting up the container, Nike clearly indicated that it
was in no way an advertising campaign for the firm and the city of
Vienna denied the existence of any negotiations with Nike on
renaming Karlplatz. Shortly afterwards, the container and the
defence movement turn out to be a staged event criticising brands
by Public Netbase, a Viennese artistic communications platform,
and the Italian art group 0100101110101101.ORG – a media deception
aimed at drawing attention to the domination of economics in every
area of life.
California, 1993. Activists of the Barbie Liberation Front buy 300
Barbie dolls: the “Talking Barbie” model and its masculine equivalent
“Talking GI Joe”. They carefully opened the packaging, took
apart the dolls and exchanged their vocal chips. They then repacked
everything and put the dolls back on the shelves. The silhouette of
the soldier then began to ask “I love school, don’t you?” while the
female doll declared with a martial voice “Dead men tell no lies”.
The event, which was widely reported on in the media, was an
attempt to demonstrate the existence of sex-related cliches.
Both these forms of protest are equivalent in their tactical use of
the awakening economy. They attempt to be as spectacular as possible
and to create a substantial impact in the media to strengthen
the force of their demonstrations. In both types of process, an
attempt was made to invert the unequal distribution of strengths
between protest groups operating locally and corporations acting
globally. This attention drawing strategy has been described by
Herfried Münkler as a typical form of behaviour in asymmetrical
conflicts involving terrorism and gorilla activities. 8 Although these
campaigns may be effective in terms of
their media resonance and contribute
to wider awareness of problems, they
have a drawback: by virtue of their
structure, they are defensive and, in
spite of the counter-current, remain
affirmative. To be effective within an
awakening economy, action has to submit
to the logic it attempts to criticise:
the logic of marketing. Such action
therefore contains no positive alternative,
no counter-model to the imperative
of having to buy.
The builder of dreams
What does all that signify for architects?
The situationist ideal for architects
is to be a creator of processes
and ambiances that provide space for
the flowering of individual liberties:
“The architect (...) will henceforth be a
builder not of single forms but of complete
ambiences.” 9 The architect of
Corporate-Situationist-Mainstream-
Paradise is also a designer of worlds of
sensation and living. However, he does
not design spaces of freedom in the situationist
sense but uniquely interiors
for spectacles specific to brands. And
this goes for all the “whores” identified
by Philip Johnson as role models for
the corporation of architects. The withdrawal,
frequent today, into aesthetics
and technology, superficially providing
freedom from “collaboration”, will not
save architects and urban developers
from fundamentally revising the attributes
of their function. On the contrary,
happy to receive potential orders, they
will design physical spaces in which
adventures and brand-related situations
can be discovered and experienced
dangerously. Goodbye the project
manager, hello the builder of
dreams!
The builder of dreams is a whore, on
the lookout for lucrative orders. He has
to be reactive to changes in the conditions
and requirements of reality, abandon
the moral and aesthetic rigour of
modern times and in turn devote himself
to the practical requirements of
event-based consumption. Contrary to
the consumer-smart guys of Michel de
Certeau, he will not succumb to the
false idea of believing himself ahead of
his adversaries. The builder of dreams
who prostitutes himself with pride
knows only too well that the so-called
lead of the smart guy is short lived, that
his ruses to resist are only embraced to
make immanent improvements to the
system. But if the architect wants to be
more than just an inconsequential
smart guy, he shouldn’t be entirely
without scruples. Nowadays, there only
seem to be “architects without attitudes”,
radically opportunistic, oscillating
between market-based, avantgarde
and critique but, with their exag-
gerated dervish dance, and their tactical
uses of space, they are able to build
for every type of event and therefore
create something approaching freedom.
10
Friedrich von Borries is an architect and space
tactician in Berlin as well as editor of the
Blindstadt Collection (www.blindstadt.de and
www.raumtaktik.de).
1. Soundtrack from “My Adidas”, Run DMC,
Raising Hell, 1984
2. Michel de Certeau, Kunst des Handelns,
Berlin 1988, S. 13
3. Vgl. H&M-Chef Rolf Eriksen: “Die Deutschen
lieben Hennes & Mauritz”, in Frankfurter
Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 16. 11. 2003
4. Guy-Ernest Debord, Gil J. Wolman et. al.
(Internationale Letrriste): “Antwort auf die
Frage“ (1954), in: Roberto Ohrt: Phantom
Avantgarde. Eine Geschichte der
Situationistischen Internationale und der modernen
Kunst, Hamburg 1990, S. 79
5. Tom Holert : “Brainware im Strukturwandel“,
in Sven Ehmann, Axel Fischer, Krystian Woznicki
(Hrsg.): Sneakers etc., Berlin 2002. – The concept
“Corporate Situationism“ was seen by me for
the first time as a keyword in the above interview
and has not, up to now been further explained by
Holert
6. Constant: “Eine andere Stadt für ein anderes
Leben” (1959), in Der Beginn einer Epoche. Texte
der Situationisten, Hamburg 1995, S. 80
7. Ada Louise Huxtable: The Unreal America,
New York 1997, S. 90ff.
8. At least this is what the magazine Page
reported in its 10/2003 issue. For me, such a
request has not yet received a response from
Ora-ito. The announcement appears credible
given that pirated brands for the moment only
appear on the web site of’Ora-Ito in the “old
page” section
9. Swoon/toyshop, “I want to be part of the city
that I live in“, in arranca! Issue 28, winter
2003/2004
10. www.nikeground.com
11. Herfried Münkler: Die neuen Kriege, Reinbek
bei Hamburg 2003, page 189 and following.
12. Constant: “Rapport inaugural de la
Conférence de Munich “ (1959), in
Mark Wigley: Constant’s New Babylon,
Rotterdam 1998, page 101
13. Also with this meaning: Anna Klingmann:
“Flüssiger Postmodernismus“, in Regina Bittner
(Editor), Event City, Frankfurt/Main 2001, page
333
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