Holy Gin!

Bombay Sapphire’s new advertisement, Imagination Installation, is the perfect expression of modernity and capitalism.

It is a work of art: a floating arrangement of blue shapes covered in thousands of crystals. When viewed from straight on, these swirling designs of crystal and blue, representing imagination, seem to burst from their source: a bottle of the company’s gin.

Bombay Sapphire decided to install the project in an old Catholic Church. The building is in disrepair, and the viewer can see stained-glass windows on the walls.

In fact, the installation itself sits directly in front of where the altar was. Flanking the sides of the piece are two alcoves from which statues of saints once looked out over the congregation.

These artistic choices are very symbolic. The old, crumbling gray church represents the old age; it is the age of religion, convention, unimaginativeness and bleakness.

Against this backdrop, the vibrant blue and crystal stand in shocking contrast representing the current age. It is that of life, vibrancy, imagination and beauty.
Out with the old and in with the new.

The minds behind the piece are mistaken, however, if they believe that it is not religious. The project brags it took 2,500 hours to put together and includes 75,000 stones.

This product of devotion and sacrifice stands magnificently in the front of the church, waiting to be reverenced by all who look upon it. The makers have literally replaced God with their brand through thoughtful and well-executed imagery.

The beatitude of modern liberal capitalism places the markets above the individual. Rather than viewing the markets as a means to human flourishing, people often understand them to be the end of human existence. Many act based on what the market says, its holy word dictating how they live, their virtue and their politics.

One digital number zipping across a board determines their fulfillment. Viewing the poor as little more than a drag upon the economy is the example par excellence of this backwards prioritization of the economy over those it ought to be serving.

But so is viewing human beings as little more than contributors or potential-contributors to the economy.

Believing the market is to be served through attaining particular virtues — for the Church of Bombay Sapphire, the cardinal virtue appears to be “imagination” — is subscribing to a religion.

The more marketable skills and desirable qualities you have, the more you can participate in the Divine Life (the market).

The Bombay Sapphire installation, although beautiful, is really nothing new. It shows modern capitalism for what it is: a substitute for religion.

­— mthomas5@indiana.edu