Rings of Fire

Our BRAND BRIEFINGS happen twice a year and analyse a central theme shaping global culture. Over the last six months, one force has been more pervasive than anything else: heat. This is an important and unavoidable topic to discuss for many reasons, the most prominent of course being its devastating impact on the planet, nature and people. But we’ve also been observing how heat, in a more figurative sense, with all its pressure and passion, is coursing through society. 

For our Autumn BRIEFING, we’ll use heat as a lens to map out three cultural zones:  

• Environmental heat: the literal, physical warming of the planet; measurable rises in temperature and thermal phenomena across earth, air and water.
• Discursive heat: pressurised heat; the turning up of rhetorical and ideological temperature, raising the stakes and intensity of public discourse.
• Affective heat: felt and embodied; the bodily and emotional intensity that heat evokes, from urgency and excitement to passion and desire.

Building on previous themes, we’ve assessed the importance of friction, and how culture is becoming more chaordic, both demonstrating how extremity and polarisation in culture is intensifying. The subject of heat continues this sentiment, but recognises how we can harness these white-hot, fervent, impossible-to-ignore feelings to transform systems, assert our collective power, and become charged with incandescent energy. 

Environmental Heat 

Heat in its most literal sense is environmental, a subject our resident heat correspondent Philip Teale has assessed in his Hot World Bummer and Night Mode SEEDS, reporting on how the climate is changing the patterns and belief systems we’ve lived by for centuries and the ways brands are responding to this in ever-more inventive ways: Rick Owen's personal air-con jackets; Evil Ray’s devilish sunscreen brand; the blending of sports and nightlife. 

When we asked Ruba Al-Sweel from POSTPOSTPOST, ‘what feels real to you right now?’, she responded:

"I could start off with this heat. This heat is extremely real, as well as all the avenues it opens up about our place in the world and our bodies, what we’ve done to accelerate this and who’s forced to experience more heat than others."

These ideas are reflected more broadly across SEED CLUB. In the last COMMUNITY CALL, a constellation of topics that revolved around heat emerged: climate adaptive architecture; how water shortages disproportionately affect women; a revived interest in solarpunk. 

Discursive Heat

In Hyperlocal Rap, Nirukti Nayak explores how the defiant youth led political movements in Nepal and India have resulted in real government change. Prime ministers have resigned and officials stepped down; in their place, leaders who not only hear these young people, but are cut from the same cloth. 

Another way discursive heat is being turned up is through the prominence of ‘explainer’ and intellectualised content, which we covered in Let Me Explain by Natalie Podaima, Writer As Image by Idil Galip, and Insight as Influence dissect. Knowledge, understanding and critical thought ignited and highly covetable. 

Discursive heat is about challenging ways of being and the establishments that have dictated these modes. A push back against Big Tech is one significant example of this. Brands such as Fairphones and Framework offer modular products; Modem’s inventions challenge preconceived notions of what tech should be and look like; Glitch embraces AI to help enrich our relationship with nature. 

Affective Heat 

Looking at food and sex as two of humanity's primary sources of satiation, The Pleasure Recession studies how we connect a lack of sex and eroticism with the unprecedented rate at which people are shrinking their bodies, whether that be enabled by GLP-1s or otherwise.

"Our bodies were once thought of as centres for sensory delight, yet they’re now largely seen as systems to optimise and invest in, discussed in the co-opted language of venture capital"

‘Everyone is beautiful but no one is horny’, Raquel S. Benedict surmises of today’s culture, using film as a medium to assess this shift, and which the onslaught of sex-first TV shows and films reflects: Heated Rivalry, Off Campus, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, I Want Your Sex. It seems we’re getting our fix vicariously. A rediscovered relationship with our senses, bodies and viscerality is something our Stupid REPORT, Neuroaesthetics and Touching Glass also examine. 

The emotional fires heat flames is also evident in how obsessed people have become with food: as status symbol; conduit for passion; means of expression. The almost uniquely male fixation with Anthony Bourdain is a pronounced symptom of this. Maybe it’s about proving how skilful or cultured you are, but when you boil it down, it’s about deep physical pleasure and desire. After all, Bourdain himself clarified: ‘As a chef I'm not your dietitian or your ethicist, I'm in the pleasure business.’ 

Another business that affective heat encompasses is that of emotions and spirituality. Last year, Victória Oliveira and Rose Radtke asked why esoteric practices were becoming more embedded in corporate life in their Astrofuturism and The Business of Spirituality SEEDS. What was once considered fringe and woo-woo is now becoming commonplace. Jonathan Anderson’s Tarot spread doing the rounds and becoming an instant meme epitomises this. It now seems spirituality is experiencing what therapy did a few years ago: its language trickling into the discourse and neatly productised.

The BetterHelp of spirituality is Keen, an online marketplace for spiritual advisors. Recently undergoing a vibrant rebrand rooted in ancient wisdom and folklore, Keen’s growth comes at a time when people are treating chatbots as therapists and turning to the artificial for advice on life’s rawest, most visceral emotions. Through whatever means available, there's an innate, burning desire to feel.

As we previously explored, against greater ease and speed, friction becomes valuable. But friction without heat is impossible. Heat is the multiplier, the energiser, the transformer. Heat can be destructive, and it will be critical for brands and institutions to take drastic action against environmental heat. But embracing heat as affective and discursive offers a more embodied and empowered existence. 

Join us on 14th October for an in-depth assessment of these fiery cultural signals: