There’s something very appealing about a car crash. Morally speaking, that’s a very shitty sentence, but damn, David Cronenberg made a whole movie about it. Outside of rather unfortunate timing in a live situation, one might witness this kind of a scene through highway surveillance footage, old vehicle operating safety videos, or caught by a dashcam. These images are meant to document and inform in some way; they are operational. But they’re also images of high emotion – they often involve the risk of danger and leaving the confinements of the law; therefore, there’s an instinct of wanting to see them, like a house on fire, robbery, a high-speed chase, elevated by the voyeuristic eye of the camera. A view typically reserved for certain individuals, giving the impression that having access to this perspective is exclusive – the eye of God, the Panopticon. For the generations alive today, it’s more familiar to consider these events from a sensationalized standpoint rather than a factually documented one. There might’ve been a period when crime was reported in order to simply ‘spread the news’, but by the time OJ Simpson’s infamous high-speed car chase rolled around, the general public’s eyes were glued to their TV screens watching the white Bronco from a helicopter-view, not just for the sake of ‘knowing’.
It’s precisely this voyeuristic pleasure that spawned hour-long car crash compilations on YouTube. Imagery from movies of almost-crashes and cars generally driving recklessly are used to convey and evoke a high-strung rush in, for example, an IDLES music video for the song aptly titled ‘Car Crash’. The current top comment under the video reads: “This makes me feel so powerful and confident…like I could send a mildly confrontational email without crying.” Cronenberg’s Crash (1997) is also heavily mood-boarded on Tumblr.
One can outline a trajectory forming of the image: from operational → sensational, provocative, fetishized → What’s next?
On a slightly different note, Instagram.
Though it’s commonly believed that it has fallen far from the height of its popularity, it still allows for what used to mainly be called ‘trends’ – aesthetics and micro-aesthetics – to surface at incredible rates, to the point where some have already deemed the latter dead soon after its materialization, due to being rooted in consumerism and the speed at which it cycles onward. The aesthetic abundance also loosens the rigidity of the framework, problematizing critical thinking.
Aestheticizing something seemingly ‘unaestheticizable’ is not a new concept (which means that everything is aestheticizable, depending on your moral stance, I guess), yet it’s something worth exploring.
Gorpcore archival brand PASTDOWN has created an ad on Instagram using clips depicting different scenarios, some of them shot as if they’re recorded on CCTV. In the first one, a car crashes into anti- parking poles and a comical amount of passengers scurry out of the vehicle. In the second clip, a person runs up to an ATM machine, kicks it and money starts aggressively pouring out. In the last video, a series of jackets tied to one another is let out of a window of an apartment complex, and another hooded man climbs down and runs away, all of this depicted as blurrily-pixelated (as-if) surveillance footage.
Screenshot (slide 1/5) from archival brand PASTDOWN’s campaign ad (2024)
Screenshot (slide 2/5) from archival brand PASTDOWN’s campaign ad (2024)
Screenshot (slide 5/5) from archival brand PASTDOWN’s campaign ad (2024)
These particular clips have common threads – in all of them, what’s committed could either be permissible as a crime or at least a nuisance, or the act naturally seems like it’s connected to something nefarious. The view that’s intentionally made to resemble one of a surveillance camera at a streetcorner lamppost or above and besides an ATM provides a voyeuristic look onto a sensational- seeming but staged event. The vintage hoodies of PASTDOWN hide the identities of the supposed perpetrators, stylizing their anonymity and the act itself.
This post references an ongoing advertising trend (on Instagram, particularly), that sells consumers a product in a seemingly effortless, natural way. In trying to sell clothing, food and drinks, homeware etc., one will see clips of people in a ‘natural habitat’ that’s elevated and aestheticized thanks to the product. One can imagine a video of a sunny cafe terrace table with beautiful cocktails and dishes, enjoyed by well-dressed, grinning influencers – advertising a new, local, must-see spot.
In the case of PASTDOWN, the product is actually depicted in what could be called non-standard situations. Certainly, this imagery won’t speak to every crowd, but this is the point, of course. The images, portrayed specifically through the lens of surveillance, attract attention (in the same way a real car crash would) and only afterwards reveal themselves as advertising. When a brand intentionally inserts itself into these contexts, it is glamourizing and aestheticizing an otherwise ‘unattractive’ circumstance.
The situations created here are actually a somewhat aggressive and provocative response to the Instagram trend of advertising through situating products in various natural-seeming contexts, that simultaneously complies with its commercial framework. While the advertisement of a product could potentially elevate the life portrayed in the fake scenes, like in a video of a well-dressed girl sipping coffee on a sunny terrace, the insertion of vintage clothing within crime-esque scenarios offers a Sex- Pistols-chain-smoking-not-listening-to-your-mom-type of ‘coolness’ to these everyday-like scenes. Only, they’re not as innocent or socially acceptable as having a coffee.
Though operational images are functional, they are still designed to be so . While some aesthetics rise from categorizing values in a way that sees beauty in the apparently unbeautiful, this is a case in which it’s important to note that designing a working image requires the designer to work within an aesthetic (that stems from a practice). This makes sense since the aesthetic guidelines serve the functionality of the media. In the case of surveillance imagery, the operational image loses its functionality through its decontextualization and application of mimetic aesthetics for the purposes of pure visual pleasure, or for the purpose (maybe a contradictory word to use) of disinterested pleasure. In a (Edmund Burke-ian) way, it goes from sublime to beautiful.
What is meant to be said here is that a gap should be considered between a ‘working aesthetic’ derived from and for a function, and a ‘spontaneous aesthetic’ – the users and audience of which don’t seem to concern themselves with a background check.
What actually ends up happening is a ‘re-operationalization’ of sorts. The aestheticization of surveillance footage de-functionalizes it (or at least adds an unnecessary element) in the context of its purpose, and reconfigures its aesthetics for commercial ends. Surveillance has inherent militaristic roots, and by applying this to the visuals of advertising, it normalizes and dulls down the perception of this imagery, meaning that the aesthetic pseudo-utility de-militarizes it, but, in the context of the Instagram campaigns, certainly commodifies it.
The concept of re-operationalization can extend elsewhere.
It’s widely understood that during the Soviet era, the countries taken over by the occupational force were severely censored in just about every way, with a heavy hand over the cultural sector. Multiple genres of music were forbidden, songs written by individuals were also prohibited to be played or performed, or they had to go through the Union of Soviet Composers, a division of the Ministry of Culture, which would often end up changing the songs entirely or completely cutting the chord on them. This also means that specific bands from inside and outside the borders were banned – including, at the time, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, and The Rolling Stones, for example.
Around the 1950s, and embraced by the Stilyaga subculture, emerged the so-called ‘ribs’ and ‘bone music’. X-rays, when deemed useless by hospitals, were illegally sold or stolen, cut in rounded shapes with cigarette-burn holes in the middle, then needled by a Telefunken recording lathe – a machine that records audio and sort of etches it onto the material. Lastly, they were sold on the black market (sketchy men on the streets) to anyone who had a record player and wanted to hear The Beatles. Of course, sometimes scamming occurred and false ‘records’ were sold, these being the unintentionally foundational roots of experiences on platforms like Napster in the late 90s – early 2000s.
In this case, operational images – the x-rays typically serving their purpose in the medical field – are re-operationalized into cultural artefacts, still maintaining an element of commodification.
So, what we’re seeing is a process of mutation. What was initially an idea of operative imagery being de-functionalized, is really a redelegation of purpose. It’s ‘neither created nor destroyed’, just moves to a different industry – from surveillance to advertising, or from the medical industry towards the cultural sector. The commodification of the military is not an unfamiliar concept, yet the ‘vibe-ification’ of operational images – the field of which has been synonymous with violence, brute force, authority, etc. – drags an uncomfortable feeling behind it.
On the other hand, when looking at the second example, the re-operationalization worked as an act of resistance against a culture-thwarting regime. Though some profited from it financially, it was also an opportunity for the general public to access outside culture. Long live Pink Floyd.
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Kristiāna N. Pūdža has graduated in 2025 from the Rotterdam Willem de Kooning Academy Graphic Design BA program with special interest in media theory and visual cultures. A crystallized form of her thesis or ‘research document’ has been made into this post.