On the 7th. of December 2012, in the archetypal street of Fuencarral in Madrid, in front of the Levi’s shop, 10 waiters handed out “apparent” bottles of water on which an “apparent” slogan declared:
“IT DOESN’T MATTER THAT YOU DON’T HAVE WATER…
AS LONG AS YOU HAVE JEANS”
501 numbered and signed bottles were handed out among the passersby who, attracted by the gift, were more than taken by surprise by realizing that it was a question of a critical object referring to those fashion brands which use toxic products when making the cloth and that what was aside was jean cloth and not water.
It was all part of an action designed by Yolanda Domínguez for Greenpeace, to mark their Detox campaign. In this case the action was centred on Levi’s, whose factories in Mexico are limiting the use of river water, causing serious problems for the local population.
By making it visible, the bottle means to bring the end consumer closer to this “other reality” in the countries where the products are manufactured. This is then summed up with the ironic phrase of the blind philosophy of consumerism “what does it matter what happens in another part of the world so long as I have my product”.
