Nowadays, everyone tells artists the same thing: build your brand, treat your craft like a product line, turn your creative identity into a repeatable formula and prioritise visibility over depth. Standardise, optimise, scale! HM Algorithm is watching you :) that the price we pay showing our works on line.
Even so, I don’t want to be a b-r-a-n-d recognised for a logo, a polished colour palette, or a slick marketing engine. I want to be recognised by style and story instead.
A brand for me feels like a factory line. It demands uniformity, predictability, like living in a box. Branding asks you to perform some kind of persona until it replaces the creator itself. It treats art as inventory and the audience as consumers. Even if it could be a bit of truth, it’s too direct and simplified for me. .
Instead of a brand I chose t h e a t r e. Yes, I know, it still could sound like a niche brand, but it makes a difference.
In the theatre, art isn’t a stagnant label - it is a live metamorphosis. It doesn’t ask you to stay the same; you can build entire worlds on your “stage”. It is character, stenography, atmosphere, narrative. It allows shifts in psychological temperature, play of light and shadows, colours and textures. It allows you to experiment. You can be realistic here or create parallel realities, rely on ancient stories and symbols or move to contemporary aesthetic. Still being you1
And yes, I know well what “branding” means from my previous studies at the University (I have diploma in Management of international business and marketing:). So, the thing is that we are forced to apply same rules of mass commercial product and services marketing to all creative industries and art. We are all the same for algorithm and commercial market.
Of course, we want to sell our art and be recognised by our auditorium, but for me first of all its all about the style and creative story, or even about our special talent to create thing specific only for us.
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NB (my opinion): even if it is a wonderful, magic gift form above or our genes, raw talent is simply a gift - a spark of potential that we either chose to use or let fade. Without technical mastery, dedication, consistency and even some kind of obsession, this spark could never turn into a consistent result. Skills and discipline is necessary in art as in any other area.