The Satanic Packaging and Advertising Initiative (SPAI)

'Performance' (with image projections) at ICOLS Launch - MCA Sydney - 13 July 2002

 

"Despite what was advertised I’m not going to be doing a performance. This is obviously a bit of corporate misrepresentation. I would say however, that in the scale of what we’re getting used to, this is not a massive corporate misrepresentation, but it is a corporate misrepresentation, but it certainly hints at behaviour patterns that we are becoming increasingly accustomed to.

But when we compare this lie - that I’m going to be doing a performance - with the misrepresentation by Worldcom of a profit of 3.8 billion dollars, my lie fades a little bit into the background. Or when we think that Enron hid one million dollars between 1998 and 2001 or that Merrick recorded 12.4 billion in revenue that was never collected… I would also like to point out that these corporate mismanagements are also a direct result of an ICOLS project.

I was wondering how best to explain the workings of ICOLS and I then thought it would perhaps be best just to talk about one of the ICOLS projects and its effects and outcomes.

The project was initially conceived by the Department of Global Disenchantment and it used as its starting point a curious geographical fault line that runs up through Mexico, through Arizona, and then ends up in Dick Cheney’s hometown. Dick Cheney, as you know, is also being investigated for some of his operations from when he was with Halliburton.

Ok, so now this is the faultline. It’s route 666.

Initially the Department of Global Disenchantment was going to try and expand the psychic geography which is described by this route. It wanted to amplify the resonances and decided that the best way to do this was to provide conference facilities. So around about 1925 to 1930 ICOLS bought a chain of road houses that provided conference facilities to corporate America. Here’s the 666 Motor Inn which was one of the most popular meeting points for the boards of corporate America.

Now, this was fine as far as it went, but it was only affecting a minute part of the population and that really for serious Icolic malfeasance to be generated, a new initiative was needed and I think that my department, in which I am Night Manager, can take some credit for this, even though we were using technology that had been developed by the Department of Global Nostalgia.

What we decided to do was to use disease as a vector but not actually disease in the sense of Crazies, but to use the cure of the disease as the vector, to try and disseminate the Icolic malfeasance, and so we set up a small company not far out of Tucson, Arizona that started producing cough linctuses.

It actually started around about 1910 - we actually reversed time slightly in order to do this - and we took out advertising campaigns in all these local papers.

You’ll also notice by proximate placing of advertising material you have underneath it, ‘Start your own Business’ and I can tell you that in fact Worldcom was set up with this loan and through advertising,

we managed to place 666 as the preferred cold cure of the population running along route 666.

We named this initiative the SPAI, the Satanic Packaging and Advertising Initiative and I do think that in many ways it speaks for itself. It speaks about the functions of a lot of ICOLS. I must say that at this point the company was workshopped and further developed by the department of Future Projections and I would like to congratulate my colleagues on the excellent work that they did.

Those at 666 managed to develop and penetrate the market to such an extent (we grabbed them young as this advertising image indicates)

that it survived from 1910 as the favoured product, and there’s nostalgia,

which is informing the brand longevity so this sort of brings it up to, closer to, the present day,

and it is I think not just coincidence that Cheney was in the psychic area of this ICOLS project, that Enron used the conference facilities, that Merrick, or rather the financial planner for Merrick, his family in fact comes from the area where in fact Tub o’Rub 666 was launched and that Xerox, which has just been forced to at least take five years profits results, had a significant branch presence in the Tub o’Rub catchment area as well.

Now, built upon the success of the 666 experiment ICOLS has decided to diversify and also localise. We think that it is important that now that we have proven that we can profoundly corrupt corporate America,

it may be time to bring the ICOLS approaches closer to home.

Now first we thought about a shipping line but somehow that seemed to be too slow and probably not making enough inroads and then we thought that given our need to downscale slightly, to cut back, that local broadcasting might be the way to go

and about three or four years ago we set up 666 ABC Canberra, the broadcasting station, and I think you can see the direct result of this ICOLS project in our current Government’s refugee policies and I think that this is something that ICOLS can claim as another significant intervention of the 666 undertaking and we are sort of proud of it.

Now, this is the first time that ICOLS has become public and we are here to celebrate ICOLS. This is only an example of its incredibly complex undertakings. These departments, the Department of Dislocated Memory, the International Department of Local Aesthetics, the Department of Global Nostalgia, the Local Unit of Missing Links, the Department of Future Projections, the Department of Revolutionary Nostalgia, the Department of Global Disenchantment have all been engaged in ongoing business plans and projects etcetera of the same resonance and the same interest as the 666 cough linctus and the SPAI undertaking.

I would also like to point out that, I think it’s the Department of Global Disenchantment, would like you to engage in the protocols of virtual relations over there, through the manipulation of pickled onions and toothpicks. Now, we cannot promise that DNA material will not be sampled from these pickled onions later and that you may actually find yourself branded and cloned and possibly in Tucson Arizona."