<index <back next>

Shop-dropping: subversion through commerce
WGSN, August 12, 2005

Shop-dropping is the opposite of shoplifting, where consumer goods are subversively altered or rewrapped and put back on the shelves. Not only popular on the art scene, it's also gaining ground as a form of guerrilla marketing.

First there was the Barbie Liberation Organisation set up in 1989, which swapped the voice hardware inside talking Barbie dolls for that of GI Joe dolls and put them back on the shelves. Unsuspecting shoppers bought Barbies that said "Vengeance is mine!", while GI Joe proclaimed "I love shopping!"

Earlier this year, the Pond Gallery in San Francisco - dedicated to art activism - showed an exhibition titled Shop-dropping: experiments in the aisle (March 11-April 10), cataloguing "the insertion of art into public places of commerce (specifically, conglomerate retail stores). "

CNN recently reported on Ryan Watkins-Hughes, a Brooklyn-based photographer who operates a shop-dropping website and who is arranging an exhibition for later this year, based on replacing the packaging on canned goods with labels containing his original photographs and an address for a website containing more of his artwork.

Part publicity, part a comment on commodification, shop-dropping is gaining in popularity, not just in the art world, but among advertisers representing established companies. London department store Selfridges has ironically adopted artist Barbara Kruger's bold black white and red slogan works criticising consumerism and continues to use them for its sale season artwork; signs saying "I shop there for I am" are pasted to the floors.

Shop-dropping - to covertly place merchandise on display in a store. Primarily used in guerrilla ad campaigns, tactical media projects and art installations. Also known as reverse shoplift, droplift

Links:

www.mucketymuck.org

www.shopdropping.net

www.shopdrop.org

© WGSN 2005