For every new subway ad featuring an online pharmacy and a nice monstera plant, there was a new pop-up skate shop soaking up the runoff of Supreme teens. HSWLD on Delancey, a dozen others lost to memory… Online, I browsed IJJI and v.soon and Anti-Social Social Club on my friend’s Tiny Clothing Stores Are.na channel, this selection a mere trickle of

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These artists are performing a kind of service for brands, lending their credibility and enabling the brands to “insert themselves into an existing cultural conversation.” All of these are various ways in which an artist’s work becomes branding.