Culture makes me horny

Being a Communication Agency nowadays is a great responsibility. Every day we set rules that are reflected in our communication methods, not only in our business but also in our daily lives. There was a time when beauty was defined in museums and savoured in silence. Today it is experienced on the street amidst signs and posters at 60km/h or digitally at a 2'' attention limit. Defining beauty is a responsibility. 'Culture makes me horny' is a provocation that comes about because we feel a responsibility to provoke a dialogue on the way communication is used, exploited and distorted today.

"T-shirts and posters with cut-out Renaissance paintings covered in gold will invade the Fortezza da Basso - Provoking to reflect on the role of targeted communication in our society".

We asked ourselves: "What happens if we take a classical painting and cut out the image to shift the focus to a specific point? How does the audience react?" To answer this question, we carried out a test consisting of 700 posters and 100 t-shirts. 

"A photograph with a very young and completely naked girl inside a photo book has one meaning, while inside a museum it has another and on a billboard, yet another. We want to provoke people to reflect on the role of increasingly targeted, increasingly pervasive communication, in which we are immersed without realising it."

The project is based on the concept that Culture on the one hand has become a fashionable product to be flaunted, emptied of any value in a sort of 'pornographic exhibition', while on the other hand it has produced the paradox of creating a counterculture that proudly claims to have no qualifications. On the other hand, we believe in a dynamic, evolving communication that allows anyone to express themselves and their values in the best possible way.

Culture is one of those values that makes a person attractive, that turns you on. That takes relationships to a higher plane than aesthetics by supplanting pheromones. Culture cannot be worn like fashion, it cannot be acted out. That's why we chose to use fashion to wear criticism.

"The t-shirts and posters, completely covered in the golden texture, represent precisely this value vacuum we oppose, a gold garment that shines in the sun but remains pure aesthetics."

It is a commercial product but one that has a cultural impact: by decontextualising and deconstructing the work of art, we overturn its values and invite constructive criticism.

We give because we care is our philosophy. We like to be provocative because we like to strike at the heart and provoke thought.

We dare because we care.