Television Commercial for Communism (TVCC) is a work that unmasks the complex relationship between ideology, politics and the rise of advertising and consumerism. As the title states, it imagines if the remaining communist countries of the world came together to create a commercial that pitches and markets Communism to contemporary audiences today. The work is done in collaboration with TBWA \ Vietnam, an international advertising agency who was responsible for Apple's “Think Different” campaign and award-winning campaigns for Nissan and Adidas.The irony of using advertising, perhaps the most capitalistic and anti-communist of tools, to process Communism and promote it, lies at the crux of the work. The coming together of these two disparate ideologies, Capitalism and Communism, confront the convoluted and deeply contradictory realities in the last five remaining Communist countries in the world. In the last few decades post-Doi Moi - the 1986 national implementation of economic reforms - Vietnam has been driven by a form of socialist-oriented market economy that has resulted in the emergence of a highly materialistic, consumerist culture. TVCC draws heavily on this local Vietnamese context whilst maintaining a strong relevance to the wider global context of Communism today. In a world where politics have also become a veritable media circus centred around showmanship, social media and celebrity status, TVCC is a timely piece that calls into question the relevance and credibility of not just Communism, but of political ideology in general today. It lays bare the close parallels between propaganda, advertising and mass media, and the engineering of power and influence.
