40 Years after the Vietnam War (aka the American War)
The Snake Eats Itself In Saigon
Genevieve Erin O'Brien
A conceptual photographic performance
In a global capitalist economy, branding is everything. For luxury brands the scarcity of the product creates the inflated value. Luxury is reserved for those who can afford it. These brands mark a particular class, denoting the haves and have nots. If you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it. This conceptual performance documents my journey over the course of three days through the 12 districts of Ho Chi Minh City, capturing the manifestation of this collapse of capitalism in communist Vietnam. I chose to travel through the city on the back of a motorbike, which represents modernity and forward movement for Vietnam. In a mixed economy, where sartorial choice is limited, brand names are seen for their value and therefore replicated so as to capitalize on these brand names and luxury ideals. They are ripped off and pasted on every shirt. In turn, this copying, replication, and knock-off industry then dilutes the value of the luxury brands. Seeing these knock-offs, many of which are labeled as the “genuine article” represented in the city landscape illustrates the concept of the capitalism collapsing on itself. I chose to take pictures only from the back to highlight what is “behind” the reality of the global capital luxury fashion industry, many of the goods produced in the global south and Southeast Asia. Many of these people pictured are the workers in the Nike and Gap factories, producing garments for the middle-income consumers, unable to afford the expensive luxury brands themselves. These images of Saigon today illustrate the lowest end of the sartorial stratification through the failed replication of luxury brand names. Other images in this series represent a semiotic language where the humor and irony are only legible to a Western gaze, one replete with the complex context of US and Vietnamese socio-political relationships over time. I find it entertaining to see these luxury brand names and iconic American images and random text in English printed anywhere and in any manner and sold and worn in Vietnam.
Genevieve Erin O'Brien
A conceptual photographic performance
In a global capitalist economy, branding is everything. For luxury brands the scarcity of the product creates the inflated value. Luxury is reserved for those who can afford it. These brands mark a particular class, denoting the haves and have nots. If you have to ask how much it is, you can’t afford it. This conceptual performance documents my journey over the course of three days through the 12 districts of Ho Chi Minh City, capturing the manifestation of this collapse of capitalism in communist Vietnam. I chose to travel through the city on the back of a motorbike, which represents modernity and forward movement for Vietnam. In a mixed economy, where sartorial choice is limited, brand names are seen for their value and therefore replicated so as to capitalize on these brand names and luxury ideals. They are ripped off and pasted on every shirt. In turn, this copying, replication, and knock-off industry then dilutes the value of the luxury brands. Seeing these knock-offs, many of which are labeled as the “genuine article” represented in the city landscape illustrates the concept of the capitalism collapsing on itself. I chose to take pictures only from the back to highlight what is “behind” the reality of the global capital luxury fashion industry, many of the goods produced in the global south and Southeast Asia. Many of these people pictured are the workers in the Nike and Gap factories, producing garments for the middle-income consumers, unable to afford the expensive luxury brands themselves. These images of Saigon today illustrate the lowest end of the sartorial stratification through the failed replication of luxury brand names. Other images in this series represent a semiotic language where the humor and irony are only legible to a Western gaze, one replete with the complex context of US and Vietnamese socio-political relationships over time. I find it entertaining to see these luxury brand names and iconic American images and random text in English printed anywhere and in any manner and sold and worn in Vietnam.