‘Punkism’ – Establishing An Invented Ideological Movement

The brief for the Movement project was to invent a new ideological movement and create digital material that promotes, embodies and explains that movement. The only constraints were that the ideology must not exist, and that the digital material must be a piece  of movement – such as an animation or video clip.

I began approaching this brief by considering my own interests and beliefs – things that I would want changing in the world – in order to establish my own ideology. I was very quickly drawn to ideas situated around music, and more specifically so, the pop music industry; an industry whose practises and attitude towards music in general clash with my own. I’ve always seen the pop music industry as something that is purely focused on generating money – manufacturing music for profit, using the same recycled sounds and themes over and over again, essentially taking the heart and personality out of music. Music, like all art, is a platform for creative expression – and I feel as though the pop music industry is destroying and limiting this through its attitude. On the other hand, punk culture and music has always sought to rebel against this and put creativity and personality back into music, straying away from the norms. It was from these thoughts that I ended up on the idea of ‘Punkism’ – a movement dedicated to rebelling against the practises of the pop music industry and encouraging others to be a little more punk.

I created a mind-map in order to explore this concept further and give clarity to the movement, considering its intent, target audience, branding methods and processes of development.