Re-member the audience: Adrian Piper's Mythic Being advertisements

Regardless of Piper's intention to create a generalized male figure, some of the signs she used, such as the large Afro and black turtleneck, signal the black American male nationalist, while others, including the mustache and cigar, point to an international radicalism personified in the figures of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Similarly, in her writing from the time, she hints at the Mythic Being's racial otherness by calling him "an alien presence in the art world, but a familiar presence in the rest of the world." (17) Yet in spite of Piper's use of ethnic and cultural signifiers, this and other Voice ads stand in contrast to other photo-works from the project, such as The Mythic Being: I Embody, The Mythic Being: It Doesn't Matter, and The Mythic Being: Getting Back, in which the character is portrayed as possessing an exaggerated hypermasculinity that is bound to aggressive behaviors like "cruising white women," adopting intimidating postures, and "mugging" people. (18) By contrast, the ad-works depict the Mythic Being as an androgynous, liminal, or third-sex being. The figure looks like a man, but has thoughts that often seem those of a girl or woman. Piper's placing of a gender-, class-, and racially-indeterminate figure in the newspaper piques the audience's curiosity and challenges its assumptions; these actions are in keeping with her increased awareness of issues of class, gender, and race.

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The Mythic Being ad-works were not Piper's first appearance in or use of The Village Voice; rather, they are part of her ongoing relationship with the newspaper and continued interest in alternative venues of exhibition and modes of delivery. (19) In fact, Piper had hired ad space in the Voice on two earlier occasions: first, to announce the March 1969 exhibition that the 0 to 9 Press published, and second, to place one of her Area Relocation pieces in the "Gallery" section of the Voice in the May 29, 1969, issue. Her work had also been mentioned in John Perreault's popular "Art" column several times.

The Mythic Being advertisements are just one installment of Piper's enduring critique of and engagement with traditional venues and experimentation with alternative modes of distributing art. This experimentation began with her first solo exhibition in March 1969 and reveals, on the part of the artist, an elegance of thinking that marketing specialists could certainly admire. Marketing can be defined as the execution and "planning [of] the conceptualization, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals." Further, marketing strategy is grounded in three principles, sometimes called the "3 Cs": company/competencies, competition, and consumer. (20) In conjunction with the "3 Cs" operate the "4 Ps": product, which "refers to brands, packaging, product attributes, and new product development," price, which "relates to final selling price ... trade prices, and agreement of trade margins," place, which correlates to "distribution ... and getting goods to market," and promotion, which "concerns the best way to communicate or publicize the product." (21) In the scenario I propose, the "company" refers to Piper's art-making practice. She was in "competition" with other New York-based Conceptual artists working at the time to "promote" her "product" to the "consumers." To ensure her target audience consumed the product, Piper distributed it in untraditional ways and exchanged it at prices that were decidedly below market. We will see that, for the artist-turned-marketing-specialist, the cost outlay was rather low, but the returns could be significant. The brand "Adrian Piper" could be successfully promoted, and her product (art) could be actively exchanged; at the same time, her practices remained within the limits of acceptability that are demarcated by Conceptual art's critique of institutions. (22)