Retail Poisoning | is the act of disrupting consumerism by intentionally injecting: critical / corrupted / fake / glitched data and/or hardware, into existing online and offline retail outlets.
Retail Poisoning is the act of intended (mis)placement. It is in direct contrast... to consumer-oriented society that relies on mass production. Retail Poisoning challenges marketing language and corporate communications, revealing their contradictions and dangerous manipulations.
With hacktivism and artivism, Retail Poisoning spoils household brands like Youtube, Apple, Amazon, or Kindle, sanitized spaces and art, as well as successful business models. Retail Poisoning can be adopted by anyone who wishes to expose the fragility and sterility of mass consumption with humor and ingenuity.
Retail Poisoning disturbs consumption by deliberately placing critical, controversial, or manipulated information or items in online trading and in real sales locations. Retail Poisoning initiates radical change by encouraging everyone to take action and take control again, provoking shocked reactions, hopefully laughter and maybe introspection from customers.
But Retail poisoning also discloses how much our brains are tamed by the marketing discourse. When mimicking the real thing some customers will not notice the prank because it looks so familiar. Other customers might even think that they are witnessing a brand using irony as a marketing tool.
The many forms Retail poisoning displays our love/hate relationship with consumption through a multitude of dimensions on the poisoner side and on the customer side.
Recyclism organizes Retail Poisoning workshops where participants are invited to develop counter-consuming strategies in the public and commercial space (offline or online).
