The ONS 2024 theme was launched last year via a 1 minute and 41 second long video on the media platform Vimeo. In this promotional video, a series of informational words and phrases are spoken by a woman’s voice as they simultaneously appear on the screen in different typographies. Set on top of a cacophony of stock photo images from the natural, human and technological world, the informational phrases appear in short sequences intimating a sort of socio-technological poem. In between each sequence of informational words, clustered together almost like stanzas, the ONS 2024 theme appears with a hopeful, future oriented message: “Imagine cooperation”, “Imagine the transformation”, “Imagine what we can achieve”, the woman’s voice asks.
Imagination is a powerful thing. To conceptualize novel realities, new worlds or solutions for the not-yet is a cornerstone of what it means to be human. And innovation, this ability to imagine solutions beyond that which already exists can be described as the epitome of modernity. Is it not a beautiful thought, to be able to dream up a world better, smarter and more just than the one we are living in right now? To envision solutions that can solve problems we are facing today: to imagine a better way forward.
Innovation sparked by imagination, community and the next generation is the theme for ONS 2024, the 50th edition of the international oil and gas fair, taking place in Stavanger the last week of August. This powerful concept highlights the overall theme for the conference and is accompanied by a four pillar manifesto, articulated as “Climate”, “Security”, “Leadership”, and “Technology”. Polemically, the four pillars outline an ideology of the potential for innovation that is just, environmentally friendly and inclusive, when tech innovators and energy leaders join forces and imagine the unimaginable. From an aesthetic point of view, the ONS digital and social media presence, however, does little in terms of imagination.
From a design perspective, the audio-visual language of the ONS video appears dated. The stock photo montage, together with the simple but catchy musical score, resembles conventional commercial designs made popular in the first decade of this millennium. The language is that of popular music videos, drawing on fashionable colour schemes and aesthetically pleasing sequences of moving images. The pace exponentially increases throughout the video, highlighting the greatness of humanity’s ability to overcome any obstacles that might be in the way, reminiscent of NIKE’s “Just Do It” campaign from 1988.
The “Just Do It” campaign, designed by the agency Wieden+Kennedy out of Portland Oregon, has been highlighted as one of the most successful advertising campaigns in history due to its simplicity as well as its ability to tap deeply into consumer psychology [1]. The campaign was optimistic, and questioned concepts like inclusivity, diversity and social justice, and as a design recipe it has been followed time and again since 1988.
The Imagine – ONS promotional video follows a similar pattern. Its visual simplicity is safe and unprovocative, but the message it attempts to convey taps into some of the most pressing concerns of our time. The stock photo montage shows us images referencing issues such as the climate crisis, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the energy crisis, loss of biodiversity and drought. Simultaneously the woman’s voice recites words like “demonstration”, “starvation”, “exploitation”, and “migration”. As the pace of the video quickens however, the message goes from crisis to hope: “Imagine next generation”. It is difficult not to recognize everything from the UN sustainability goals to environmental and social justice slogans in the way the images and phrases are assembled in this video. Additionally, the video’s form, the very simplistic poem that goes from crisis to hope, conveys an all too familiar and dated techno-optimistic solution to the environmental crisis. Aesthetically, by adoption of the form, rhetoric and style of earlier advertisement and socio-environmental public information campaigns, the ONS 2024 promotional video appears almost as pastiche.
In the visual arts, pastiche is the practice of mimicking or imitating previous styles and characteristics. Pastiche is an homage to earlier artistic styles in which idiosyncrasies of the original are highlighted or enhanced. Pastiche is often compared to parody, as it is also a technique that brings forth the unique mannerisms of previous styles. However, cultural critic Frederic Jameson has argued that the problem with pastiche over parody is that in abandoning mockery and satire for the benefit of homage one loses critical distance to that which is imitated [2].
In Jameson’s words: “Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without parody’s ulterior motive, without the satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared with which what is being imitated is rather comic.” [3] In other words, understanding the aesthetics of the ONS 2024 promotional video as pastiche – as an homage to the styles of earlier advertising campaigns that tapped into deeper social and environmental issues – demonstrates how uncritically it deals with the complexities of the enormous challenges it seeks to address.
Writing from the late 1990’s, Jameson’s articulation of how pastiche as a significant feature of postmodernism obscured social, ethical and subjective boundaries did not consider the reality of the increasingly complex media situation of the 2020’s. After all, how could it? The pastiche of the ONS video goes beyond the already discussed intentional stylistic choices, in that it haphazardly incorporates elements from discourses on climate, environmentalism, international security and politics. It utilizes the logic of contemporary social media systems: a medium that acts in the world [4]. Media does something to reality, or rather it creates reality by reinforcing, reiterating and reproducing information through algorithms and artificial intelligence. Like the postmodernist pastiche that Jameson referred to, the ONS video very much obscures ethical and subjective boundaries through the interplay between digitally sourced images, opinions, and information.
Appearing less like an ad campaign and more like a public service announcement, the promotional video blurs the lines between information and communication. Through unprovocative stylistic elements and an ideology most people can get behind, the aesthetics of the ONS 2024 promotional video seems, to site media scholars Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey “[as] indiscernible or inseparable from the technologies, techniques, practices, and devices that make up much of the abstract infrastructures of contemporary societies.” [5] This indiscernible aesthetic reinforces the idea that complex problems can be solved through imagination alone. Far from being funny, this aesthetic is a parody that, to paraphrase Jameson, has lost its sense of humour.
FOOTNOTES
[1] World Brand Affairs. “How Nike`s Just Do It Campaign Became a Global Phenomenon”. 21. August 2023. https://worldbrandaffairs.com/how-nikes-just-do-it-campaign-became-a-global-phenomenon/
[2] Frederic Jameson. The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998. London and New York: Verso Books, 1998.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey. Evil Media. Cambridge Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 2012.
[5] Ibid. 13.
Malin Graesse is a postdoctoral researcher with the Greenhouse Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger. She is a design historian and environmental humanities scholar and holds a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on the relationship between design and the environment with an emphasis on water and the more-than-human.