K-Hole & Box 1824. Youth Mode: A Report on Freedom

Generational linearity is gone. An ageless youth demands emancipation. The assertion of individuality is a rite of passage. The most different thing to do is to reject being different all together. Once upon a time people were born into communities and had to find their individuality. Today people are born individuals and have to find their communities.

These statements are culled from K-Hole & Box 1824’s online publication YOUTH MODE: A REPORT ON FREEDOM, an astute analysis of the complex intersections of youth culture, consumerism, generational branding and emerging trends that influence our sense of individuality, community and belonging. In a consumer and technological era awash in homogeneity, YOUTH MODE: A REPORT ON FREEDOM introduces terms such as “Mass Indie” to analyze the anxieties of finding individuality and being unique when differentiation is a group exercise of consuming organic food and fair-labor apparel. The term “Normcore,” on the other hand, describes liberation and freedom in being nothing special. It is about a society sorting through and learning how to understand individuality—today. Normcore is situational, adaptable, non-deterministic, unconcerned with authenticity, and post-aspirational.

The publication YOUTH MODE: A REPORT ON FREEDOM explores these questions and others to propose that youth does not necessarily correspond to numerical age, but reflects a way of being. Youth is a continual preoccupation with freedom. It is the richness of potential and the possibility for connection in a mode of cultural engagement based on acceptance, not denial.

K-Hole

A trend forecasting group based in New York. It was founded by Greg Fong, Sean Monahan, Chris Sherron, Emily Segal, and Dena Yago. Their reports are freely downloadable PDFs circulating in the realms of art and marketing.

Box 1824

A market-research company specializing in eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds.

Display Case

An exhibition program that utilizes the existing form of a large display case measuring four-by-twenty feet. Located on Level 0 near the Harvard Film Archive, Display Case hosts recurring exhibitions and installations by artists whose practices explore the intersections of media, advertising, art, and consumerism.