[09. Educative
It is the packaging that, as a widespread object, knows how to take charge of its educational function
Human Mart: the supermarket that “sells human beings” to raise awareness of contemporary slavery
Creative agency Cocogun and art collective The Glue Society have partnered with University of Technology Sydney’s (UTS) non-profit organization Anti-Slavery Australia to create Human Mart, the world’s first supermarket that “sells humans.” It might seem the subject of an opera from the theater of the absurd or the dystopia of a science fiction novel, yet a temporary store with this peculiarity was actually opened in Sydney in March 2021.
Human Mart is a guerilla marketing campaign that uses packaging as an unconventional means of communication, a provocation to raise public awareness of the conditions of slavery in which about 15,000 people in Australia find themselves. In this sense, this project is in continuity with other “historical” initiatives of public utility, of which perhaps the best known example is the campaign launched at the beginning of the 1980s in the United States, where they were use the milk packs to spread the faces of the so-called “missing” and support the search for missing people, especially children.
Certainly, talking about slavery today may perhaps surprise us, thinking it belongs to the past, as a distant echo of colonialism and imperialism of past centuries, or is present in some developing country, far from us and from our daily lives. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Slavery is still a current phenomenon, much closer to us than we think, present in countries considered to be developed and, in some cases, world powers.
To give visibility to this phenomenon and show how victims of contemporary slavery are bought and sold, Anti-Slavery Australia has created a fictional store where 70 products are displayed that represent cases of real people who are in conditions of enslavement. material or psychological, deprived of their rights and their freedom of decision and action.
In fact, slavery does not consist only in the trafficking of human beings or in the more explicit forms of exploitation, such as prostitution or forced labor of adults and minors. It actually involves any person who, due to coercion, threat or deception, is forced to live in abusive and violent situations, such as forced marriage, labor servitude, illegal hiring or usury.
At first glance, Human Mart looks like a shop like any other. But upon closer inspection, one soon realizes that the products displayed in the store actually contain the stories of the various victims of contemporary slavery.
Colorful and eye-catching cans, bottles and boxes are used to “package” human beings and sell them as if they were food. Each item for sale, the proceeds of which go to Anti-Slavery Australia’s fundraiser, represents a real case, tells the story of a victim, as a powerful metaphor for the commodification of the lives of people in conditions of slavery.
At Human Mart it is possible to find different types of “product”, including:
- Elliot, whose description on the package states “Made to sleep in a space so small he couldn’t lie down” (forced to sleep in such a small space that he cannot lie down);
- Osman, “Forced to work from 5am to 10 pm by his on-laws” (forced by his in-laws to work from 5am to 10pm);
- Sajida, “Escaped after eight years as a domestic servant”;
- Jamilah, “Escaped a marriage against her wishes”;
- Melati, “Brought here at 18 to work as a slave” (brought here at 18 to work as a slave).The Human Mart campaign was supposed to be launched in 2020, but was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and was finally activated in early 2021. The physical store remained open from 16 to 25 March 2021 as a temporary store in Darlinghurst, a district of Sydney’s eastern sector. Donations can still be made on the project website.
Not only the body or wrapping of a content to preserve it, protect it, transport it, etc., or the interface between consumer and product to facilitate its use and consumption, packaging functions in this project as a mass-medium, it is transformed into an unconventional communication channel.
The packaging is “re-semantized”, that is, it lends itself to a “re-meaning” operation. The tangible content of the packaging is changed for an intangible one, which is the story – and the life – of a victim of slavery. The expressive codes of consumer products are maintained (structures, shapes, colors and graphic elements), but their meaning is changed, just as happens in language, for example in poetry.
According to the logic of guerrilla marketing and other forms of “below the line” communication, the spread of an awareness message (denunciation of contemporary slavery) therefore takes place through an unusual medium (packaging of a consumer product), in a context ( point of sale) and at an unexpected moment (walking around the city).
Unlike typical public utility campaigns, conveyed through television, newspapers or other more traditional channels, “staging” interventions such as Human Mart take the recipient by surprise and stimulate their interest and curiosity, thus managing to send the message of awareness in a more direct and effective form.
Through a critical reading of the communicative dimension of packaging, it is therefore possible to identify spaces for experimentation and develop design solutions that, through suitable forms of expression and language, effectively respond to the need to sensitize the community even to the most difficult issues to deal with, enhancing the mass media function. and the educational potential of packaging.
