Gallery
Campaign overview
A direct action campaign that shifted the FAKE narrative from the digital sphere into the physical urban landscape, confronting post-pandemic consumer revival through performative intervention in spaces of luxury consumption.
Emerging from my deep disappointment after witnessing the rapid return to pre-pandemic shopping behaviours, this project became an embodied response to society’s missed opportunity for collective reflection. Instead of reassessing values, priorities, and modes of living, the public largely resumed hyper-consumption, as if the global rupture had never occurred.
FAKE | Chapter 2 translated critical theory into spatial disruption, forcing questions about authenticity, value, and the mythology of luxury to surface within the very environments that perpetuate them.
Achieved results
The intervention generated extensive public attention and media interest, significantly exceeding the reach and impact of the first FAKE chapter which operated solely online.
Public reactions demonstrated that physical disruption provokes deeper emotional and cognitive engagement than algorithm-limited digital expression. The city itself became both medium and audience, amplifying the message through confrontation rather than passive consumption.
Main reflection
This chapter revealed the stark contrast between digital and embodied activism. When critique materialises in physical space, it gains weight, permanence, and symbolic power that social media rarely sustains.
I also learned that my decision to publicly claim responsibility shifted the narrative from structural critique to personal authorship, reducing the project’s systemic focus. Maintaining anonymity might have preserved the message’s universality and prolonged its interpretative life.
FAKE | Chapter 2 ultimately demonstrated that when interventions step outside the aesthetic comfort of digital platforms, they challenge not only systems of consumption but also the social norms that protect them. It affirmed that embodied critique carries a transformative intensity impossible to replicate online.