BY JOHN CHARLES BRICKER, JOSEPH PLEASS AND JACK WAGHORN

Salesforce.com, Inc. is an American cloud computing company headquartered in San Francisco, California.
As of spring 2018, it is one of the most highly valued American cloud computing companies with a market capitalisation above $90 billion. 

Salesforce is a band that uses Salesforce.com, Inc. intellectual property as a means of appropriation for a critical purpose. This re-appropriation ranges from tour merch-andise to song lyrics to music videos and costumes. The response has been both praise from Salesforce ceo’s and threats of legal action from their lawyers. Whereas appropriation in a post-modern context tends to use modes of irony or opposition as a subversive technique (for example doppelgänger brand logos or the anti-capitalist journal Adbusters), Salesforce aims to walk the line between irony and sincerity to create a more unstable narrative; opposed to a ‘David vs Goliath’ myth.

The music is rooted within a punk context where, traditionally, the questioning of authenticity was at the root of its ideology. By placing this tradition within a neo-liberal context that is oppositional to its genealogy, we hope to open up a new conversation about authenticity and anti-establishment rhetoric.

Appropriation “infers an ideology of ownership,” and how that culture of use is directed toward the goal of sharing. This is a notion echoed in discussions surrounding the idea of a Post-Internet, and in which the culture of use that it intrinsically supports is now less of a novelty. Appropriation in our era is not the outright theft or questioning of authenticity as it was during the height of Postmodern theoretical development. With the rise of the Internet, and in particular with the rise of the many current social platforms, appropriation is now our reigning cultural condition. Through the ‘sincere’ use of appropriating pre-existing material we can create the emancipatory narratives we are lacking by shifting meaning, instead of reinforcement through opposition. This has relevance and ramifications far beyond mere artistic and philosophical debate, it has an effect on how we understand the procession of cultural innovation, as well as having direct practical, ethical, and legal implications throughout society. Given the immense cultural, global, and pro-democratic shift the Post-Internet era anticipates, is it time for art to be more engaged?