Last but not least: a little polemic

It was a long time ago when artists used to make their lithographs for the lid of a new tobacco tin in their studios, stroke by stroke with a metal pen.

Oh, here he comes again with these nostalgic fits, you will probably think, dear reader. But as soon as you have to listen to the growling and grumbling about the S3 being 2 minutes late, listen to my polemic:

In view of the bombardment of purchase requests, which - it seems - only become more intrusive and lose integrity every year, only to be stowed away in a dusty corner of our brains as image noise or even just noise, we have to ask ourselves why people do not evade this attack, or at least try to.

Watch TV and you soon discover that you are actually watching advertising. Swiss television should of course be defended, but the basic trend is criticized. Another achievement of modern advertising research, with its arsenal of Freudians, annoying telephone operators and neuroscientists, is that the retention of an advertisement is proportional to its degree of idiocy - something that the authors of the new generation of television are apparently also taking advantage of.

Now get to the point, I hear you murmur. I'd love to...

It cannot be in the interest of a healthy mind to be ritually shouted at by a plastic box or a 2x2m poster about what you have to buy in order to be a decent member of our society. Whether you convince yourself that you are immune to surreptitious advertising or deliberately place your head under a waterfall of information because you simply want to "switch off", both are silent capitulation. But to what or to whom?

I don't know for sure myself, but I am firmly convinced that a change of course is needed in advertising. I'm not saying that you should sit in front of the printing block again, but you should take it as an example, because I haven't had any advertising hanging in my room for a long time. (Letter to the editor from Luca S.)

Teaser image: Keystone