Children tend to ask 'why?' after every answer you think can put the subject to rest. They just go on until you loose your temper or until you stop trying to formulate a definite answer. This is a bit how we feel lately when people ask us what exactly Best Company is about. Instinctively we know what we want as a reaction to where we came from. Whether this is making a culturally challenging magazine with just enough commercial right to exist or exploring the boundaries of marketing to the benefit of the public by linking it to cultural progress. This is what we've been keeping ourselves busy with over the last decade. We took our hurdles with passion and because we were not in the run for personal glory we didn't even stop to collect our medals. It was not about building a new establishment but about keeping ahead of the idea of an establishment. The same establishment started to address us as some sort of experts whereas we were just part of the dialogue all along.
The cynical thing is of course that looking back at what has been created, the ultimate post modern art supermarket, partly because of our own heartfelt efforts, it does, in the new daylight, look like the proverbial monster. Our professional journey started in an era where marketing was the new art form. Art and commerce were no longer the north and south of our daily lives. Ideology and reality could meet like east and west. The word 'consumer' was blacklisted, we were talking about real people with real lives and that included our clients and ourselves. The whole idea took of course a lot of persuasion and boldness, to convince traditional marketeers that their brands could have cultural relevance and that this would be beneficial for them. It was, still is, and we didn't make it up. It was simply the way the post-modern world was turning. Commerce and culture were no longer two separate entities. Commerce in fact needed culture to innovate, explore new grounds together. And culture learned a marketing trick or two in the process. Fashion and pop, being in the middle all along raised to crazy heights.
The age of Warhol is at its peak. We started to develop couture-marketing concepts for big brands in order for them to 'legally' infiltrate in certain art and cultural scenes. Integrity and mutual respect were rule number one and the artists involved were happy to collaborate. Aiming to introduce new parameters for success in marketing, being other then quantitative revenues, and therefor immeasurable in the day to day marketplace, we managed to gain attention from both the commercial as well as the cultural booboos. In the mean time we were merely experimenting and honestly, we had a great time celebrating with our dear 'network' of 'opinion leaders'. We put the art in party and our clients were just beginning to learn how to dance to the latest tune. Our business cards proudly featured their products in stylish line drawings, like; look we are true fans! Oh well, we were naïve. Times have changed. Since the fall of 2001.
All of a sudden shareholder meetings were mentioned in the marketing innovation debate and our toy-budgets were abruptly re-allocated to traditional marketing tools like TV commercials. Lids closed on the boxes holding our finest cases. And the happy network was left standing out in the rain. 9-11 and the dark season that followed made us angry in a kind of retro anarchist way, but not frustrated. The wake up call caused a healthy adrenaline rush, not only our capitalist friends had something to loose. Immediate steps had to be taken to re-adjust to the new reality. Tough decisions were made with heroic resolution; we had to kill our baby. There was no time to feel sorry. After all, that's what bubbles do, they blow up in your face. We survived the economic crash better then many in our field probably because we never became an establishment - lean and mean was our management style - but we did close the book after the last chapter was out. Not a happy end. But a good book.
The idea that commercial brands would truly care for and embrace culture turned out to be an illusion. And the same can be said for culture honestly embracing commerce. Utopian thinking happened on both sides. The brands that panicked and cut off the roots they had grown in various progressive scenes showed the side of capitalism that we all hoped had faded forever, but no. Our clients that persisted to believe in their relationship with autonomous resources, real people with a real passion for creation and innovation, showed a considerably more pragmatic attitude towards our services. The question, 'what's in it for me' had to be answered even before it was posed. Again, from both sides. Rightfully so, we are still professionals and simply can not argue with realism, but for our other passion, to create some sort of generic platform for our creative heroes out there, for the provoking ideas we accumulate from sharing our guts with them, we have to look for new possibilities.
Now Holland may not be the most cutting edge contributor to the international debate about art and culture - Palais de Tokyo seems to be a popular answer to the question of how to popularise museums and in general the role of art in society. Now don't get us wrong, we do like Palais de Tokyo, but as a party location, not as a museum - but at least the debate is on and it's hot. We not only take part in it - again, not as experts but out of curiosity - we also don't mind getting something out of it for ourselves. On a smaller scale we have been very successful in creating this Palais de Tokyo-effect, without government funding we might add. So if that's what Holland wants, we can help for sure. But not without keeping the discussion going.
Flipping through some recent newspaper clippings about the national and international arts-crisis we find ourselves not alone, naturally. The writing is on the wall like graffiti. Post Modernism has reached its peak and therefor it has to come to its unavoidable end. Eclecticism is all around us, metal and R&B go perfectly well together and we're all swinging to the final beat. High and low culture are in bed together and they're making babies. An Outcast video is nominated as the best piece of modern art in the States.
All of a sudden the notion of modernism is put in a far bigger context, it didn't start in the sixties, but in the 18th century. Various art-disciplines lobby for their canon. We have to recognise, understand and credit the classics again. When the Concorde stopped flying columns appeared everywhere, all that fastness and all that decadence, it hasn't brought us happiness nor better taste. More the opposite. New -isms like Relational Art (or Art for networks as they call it in the UK) recognise the human interaction as the true art (this idea is still in a pretty foetal stage if you ask us) but more importantly they try to put a hold to our hunger for the new. All of a sudden there is this post utopian option to give up trying to fulfil needs and desires, to just stop striving for happiness. Roger M. Buergel, the new director of Documenta in Kassel uses strong language in Die Zeit saying that his ambition is to stay as far away from a crowd pleasing art event as possible. Success expressed in quantity is a disaster according to his ideas and this goes for the art as well as for the amount of visitors the upcoming Documenta wants to attract. More space is what he wants for his art selection, and it will include the new as well as the old. Criticising capitalism will be one of the main subjects and video art will be banned as much as possible. We can go on reciting but the message is clear. Well, not clear as in 'we have a nice new concept', but clearly we have to pay serious attention to our gut feeling and make bold statements again. Concepts belong to modernism. We would like to predict a new trend. How about autism? Or like one of the best recent art events we've seen in Amsterdam about the ideas of Zen and dada called Tourette. Stop wanting new things. It's all done anyway. What can be new is how we deal with it.
Mo Veld and Jessica Gysel founded Best Company in the fall of 2003 after collaborating in communications agency Fanclub and its gallery Fanshop for five years. Mo Veld also moonlights as a fashion journalist and Jessica Gysel as DJ Jessi-K.