 Box Fresh
Clothes and Cultures
article
0089 added
06.01.05 words Chris Byrne
technical:
QED
  ‘We
are you’.
– B*x F***h clothes advertising slogan.
“And
we are you”.
-extract from speech by Subcommander Marcos at the National
Polytechnic Institute, Zacatenco, Mexico (March 2001).
I went to the Kung Fu hip hop club in London late in 03 and was pleased
to receive a free CD with my ticket. I looked at the cover and found it
was sponsored by B*x F***h clothes. The bar and bar staff were also
decorated with B*x F***h logos. The only problem with this I would argue
is B*x F***h’s approach to culture.
In 2001, B*x F***h sold a “Zapatista Kit” retailing at £30. You could be
a Zapatista with a t-shirt, an official B*x F***h Zapatista spray paint
can and a B*x F***h CD. They had also sprayed on walls around Central
London a stencil of the Zapatista slogan “We Are You” with a Zapatista
soldier above it. There are now promotions agencies like Diabolical
Liberties in London who (unofficially) do this kind of advertising (as
well as fly-posting)! How anti-social!!
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Incidentally, according to
mediaweek.co.uk
in a profile on the Diabolical Liberties team, “When placards and
armbands were placed at an anti-war demo in February O3 for the design
agency Karmarama they dominated the next day’s reporting. Featured in
practically every national Sunday paper, the ‘Make Tea Not War’ campaign
was a stunt the team was very proud of”. I think that was
the massive anti-war demo (2 million plus?). Nothing is fucking sacred
to these vultures.
The organisers of the protest against B*x F***h (the Space Hijackers)
remind us, “The Zapatistas are a movement from Chiapas in southern
Mexico, They burst into the world’s consciousness by taking the state
capital San Critsobal de las Casas in an armed uprising on the day that
NAFTA was signed on 1st Jan 1994.
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is an agreement between the
U.S, Canada and Mexico aiming to the spread of free trade, enforced by
the WTO (World Trade Organisation). This agreement (it can be argued)
paves the way for corporations to further spread their control of world
economics, forcing developing countries to sell off industry, privatise
state services and sink deeper into debt with the World Bank and IMF
(International Monetary Fund).
The Zapatista's (under Marcos's leadership) have since organised jungle
conferences for international delegations opposed to the Global
Capitalist system, and the idea of putting corporate profit before human
rights.
In 2000 they ran a convoy from Chiapas to the Mexican capital, demanding
the end to military presence in Chiapas, the release of imprisoned
Zapatistas and the implementation of San Andreas Accords regarding the
rights of indigenous people.
This was met with wide public support in Mexico although the Zapatistas
still have to hide their faces to protect their lives.”
Red Dot (the clothes shop in London’s swinging Carnaby Street area) at
the same time were also selling a t-shirt saying “Tamil Tigers” in a
retro-baseball-ironic logo. The Tamil Tigers were…
-
Chris Byrne
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