10 August 2009: "Carles Presents ‘IAmCarles.com’"

This post is about propaganda. Design is propaganda for the object, for materiality as such, and for the predominance of the material over the spiritual, positing ideality as a quality of materiality rather than the salvation from it. Carles, by posing as a budding designer, proclaims a radically materialist philosophy that denies transcendence as an ideal.

I believe that we can meaningfully impact the world by the not only the things that we own, but also the clothes that we wear. We live in a beautiful society which encourages tiered self-expression depending on your income. You can truly show the world who you are, and where you ‘fit in’ with society.

To borrow a phrase commonly abused in the fashion press, immanence is the new black. Here Carles takes decentered subjectivity to its logical commercial endpoint, given its current situatedness within a late capitalist construct. The psychological underpinnings that once ushered in the transition to atomized possessive individualism have become unmoored; individualism is collapsing under the weight of globalization, and the more flexible branded self -- which is duplicatable while retaining an aura of unique particularity -- has replaced the idea of a coherent unified self. Hence identity is a brand, and a brand is identity, in a perfect tautology for the times: "I am Carles is a lifestyle brand, created by Carles." Being is the same as branding. Creating the self as brand is synonymous with having the self, with inhabiting the self.

The anomie and isolation inherent to virulent individualism, Carles proclaims, will be solved by a new commitment to lifestyle branding: "Just doing your best to ‘preserve/strengthen ur brand’ without ‘losing authenticity.’ It means not isolating ppl." A brand self is emptied out, eradicating the emotional problems brought on by depth psychology: "Do u feel alone? The IAMCARLES.com brand is attempting to be similar to the HIPSTERRUNOFF.com brand. It wants u 2 feel like it ‘gets’ u." Reduced to the superficial level of signals, we will all be easy to "get" -- the shared language of brands is potentially less heteroglossic than vernacular speech.

Speech is reduced to slogans and taglines, a point Carles emphasizes by emblazoning his slogan "R U CARLES? //// I AM CARLES?" -- which stresses the way brands resolve and unify individuals into a single concept -- repeatedly, in several different colors. Impoverished language and repetition deprives the self of those dark corners in which to pout and languish existentially. Instead, faces turned bravely toward the soon, the army of Carleses will march toward the new dawn...