Where Do Ideas End?

“THERE IS BOTH A FICTION AND A NON-FICTION VERSION OF YOU” – Coupland 2021, pg 85

from Douglas Coupland (2021)
Forward by Peter Saville
Hardcover 20X26 CM, 96 Pages
Limited Edition of 300 Copies

At the conclusion of a short recently published book called Douglas Coupland, the eponymous author writes:

I simply love doing random crazy visual and verbal projects that have no seeming connection to my life, because in the end, these projects always [turn] out to have had something very much to do with my life, and they take me to places I never even realized existed.

Coupland 2021, pg 80

I believe it is fitting to end this project with a quote taken from a book that collects Slogans for the 21st Century (2011-2014) within yet another medium, where each Slogan is laid out one per page against their original solid color. My hope for this project was that it could help answer Douglas Coupland’s questions: “How tightly can you compress an idea? Where do ideas end and you, as a person, begin?”

Through my revisitation of Douglas Coupland’s Slogans through time and my analysis of the comments commenters left on his Slogans post on Instagram… I do not believe I have come to a scientifically-backed conclusion. But I do have some thoughts.

An “idea” can be compressed to an awfully small space, composed of just a simple background, and comprising of a few choice words. When that idea is made public, however, it explodes and people will take it provide direct commentary to it, remix the phrasing, mimic the wording, supplement the themes, and ultimately make it their own… carrying it with them as they move through life. Instagram provides a wonderful illustration of this phenomenon and I have to wonder, where do these hundreds of commenters with voices simultaneously so distinct and indistinct take Douglas Coupland?

I know where they took me. They took me here.

Slogans Over Time & Space