Problem Pop
Could there be a more vague, more abused, more assumed concept than “pop”? Sure, any single term or label behaves similarly, like a squirming worm impaled on a taxonomic hook, fishing for meaning in the Arts. Yet my reading of pop defaults to its negative origins, wherein lie both its cultural separation from the Arts, and its contextual importation by the Arts. I would argue that little has changed in the Arts in the past half century in terms of pop developing or transforming beyond those post-war battles staged between high and low cultures.
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Problem Pop by Philip Brophy is featured in full in Issue 3 of Memo magazine.
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Artist David L. Johnson condenses centuries of enclosure into “Diggers,” repurposing hostile urban fixtures as provocations against privatisation, surveillance, and racial capitalism.
