Anarchic Adjustment was a pioneering streetwear brand and artist collective that emerged from the London punk-skate-BMX-Xerox art scene in the mid-1980s and spread like a virus when founder Nick Philip moved to San Francisco and immersed himself in the early cyberculture. Immediately, Anarchic Adjustment became the clothier-of-choice for the likes of DJ Mixmaster Morris, Joi Ito (now director of MIT Media Lab), Timothy Leary, and countless rave kids and guerrilla art punks. Those were the daze.
Now though, Philip, who in the last decade became best known for his Imaginary Foundation line, has announced an Anarchic Adjustment revival in the form of a sculpture show opening October 20 at Los Angeles’s Seventh Letter Gallery. The highly-anticipated exhibition of new work is titled “The Future is not what is used to be.”
“It’s an uncompromising satire of mass distraction, narcissism and the hidden machine lurking in plain sight,” Philip says.
He says that the sculpture above, titled “Little Brother” and inspired by Cory Doctorow’s novel, is an observation of “the feedback loop of surveillance, transparency, and a culture entirely preoccupied with its selfie.” Below, two of my other favorite works from the show — “Shackled Connectivity” and “I did it for the lulz.”
