Kaitlyn Jo
Smith

Campaign, 2018

Campaign reverses power structures by placing the viewer in front of the teleprompter as opposed to behind it. The scrolling text is pulled directly from both John McCain and Barack Obama's National Convention acceptance speeches (2008) and Levi's Go Forth advertising campaign from that same year. Copy from all three sources was written in direct response to the 2008 housing market crash and intended for a blue collar audience. The language is generic to the point that the sentences become interchangeable, a tactic I have employed within the piece. Their message is vague but clear: work hard, fight hard, and reclaim what is rightfully yours (the American Dream). Merging the three separate texts into one (not so) new campaign speech blurs party lines with capitalistic agendas to reveal lofty ideals with no real solution.