Palladium Boots And Their Explorations

Advertising can be a fireless, grasping thing. But sometimes, even if it is an excuse, or a facade, it can create something informative and entertaining.

Anyone interested in urban exploration, a rising trend in popular media, should watch the Palladium Explorations. Commissioned by venerable American footwear manufacturers Palladium, each film follows a different young model/DJ/events organizer/professional to a forgotten or neglected urban centre, where they speak to locals and and attempt to construct a case study of those places that popular media forgot, and are only now becoming rediscovered. Amongst the documentaries are hidden oil fields in the centre of LA’s residential districts, a town built over a 40 year old coal fire, and the rich and rejuvenated heart of that caliph of ruin, the flaking El Dorado of Detroit. And that one is presented by Johnny Knoxville. Fancy.

It is a trend, and there is an inherent cynicism in a trend, but the films are truly positive artworks. The viral marketing element may draw criticism, but there are remarkably few lingering shots of Palladium’s product (despite the fact that every presenter wears a pair) and the young filmmakers do seem interested in their subjects. But Palladium have produced an example of something that is still quite new in advertising; the effacing of the product itself. The boots are marginal; what is front and centre is a lifestyle and a culture that has always interested me, and that is being brought to a new audience. This is the graveyard of the twentieth century, and people are only just beginning to think about what to do with it.