NASCARization of the U

Due to most of us being out of town or otherwise unable to make the meeting today, we canceled it.  Our next meeting will be this Sunday, 3-5pm, in Wilson Library basement (at the long table in front of the Dunn Bros).  Arnoldas and Eli are going to meet tomorrow and come up with a plan, which we’ll post here soon.

Until then, check out this set of pictures of corporatized spaces that I took today in the new building for the business school (and its ideological appendage – the economics department).  I highly recommend exploring this ultra-branded educational space.  I was astounded by how brazenly they present the corporate logos of the rooms’ “sponsors” (note that there are no brands to represent the tens of millions of dollars of public money that went into the building).  My friends and I talked about ways we could subvert these brands, and we came up with a crazy idea that might complement our disorientation guide:  plastering the building with all of these brands makes it seem like a NASCAR.  We could spoof the corporate branding of the U by having an event where we hold a mock “NASCAR” race around (or inside) of the building (e.g., with bikes dressed up like NASCARs), and make it like a carnival by selling food and having games that get spectators involved in the “race” (maybe also making references to the “rat race” of the corporate world).  Many fruitfully disorienting possibilities here…