It’s About Aura, Not Content

“Aura is the ultimate branding of our generation,” writes Federico Sargentone in Midcareer Writing. The Milan-based writer’s debut book is an exploration of identity, youth, and cultural narratives that often manifest in consumer choices.

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Federico Sargentone Midcareer Writing book cover

In conversation with Claire Koron Elat, which originally took place during his book launch at 032c Gallery on February 6, Sargentone discusses the crisis of the luxury market, prioritizing context over content, and making products desirable.

CLAIRE KORON ELAT: In your book, you suggest that aura is the ultimate branding of our generation. What do you mean by that?

FEDERICO SARGENTONE: This statement is part of the chapter “Selected Ambient Works,” which is a reference to an Aphex Twin album. It’s from around 2021, which makes it one of the earliest essays in this book, and was written at a time when there was a lot of blending of aesthetics. This is almost reminiscent of the mechanics of ambient music from the 90s and early 2000s, which lacked structure and had a fluid approach to composition. I started thinking about how we apply this fluidity and blending to forms of culture. It was also during a time when you had elevated basics, and loungewear became really big with brands, such as Skims, Fear of God Essentials, and Pangaia. And a lot was about soothing tones and soothing images. It was almost like some sort of calming therapy.

When I say that aura is the branding of our generation, it’s also related to how objects, images, and experiences that defined the Millennial aesthetics were based on abstract, immersive, fluid characteristics: mood over facts—lack of structure, but plenty of suggestion. As opposed to previous generations, this wasn’t about protest or action or rebellion. We communicated things by aura.

This piece in the book also analyzed the generational shift of millennials, which is the generation that has been the most dramatically influenced by the job market and economic crisis. And so, the depression that this generation faced was very gloomy. We couldn’t focus on building a house, but we could focus on building an aura.

CKE: Since you were arguing that aura in branding is rooted in the compositional lack of order in ambient music, would you go so far as to argue that this missing structure also results in a prioritization of sensibility, images, and context over actual content?

FS: Absolutely. It’s a time where a lot of traumatic information or political information is communicated through Instagram carousels with color palettes in baby blue and pink—soothing palettes. Many mainstream media magazines also include cute illustrations to inform us about war and crime. Artist Brad Troemel talks about this quite a lot. So, the content is secondary and is wrapped in a soothing orchestration of aesthetics. It’s about something that’s not offensive or confrontational.

Midcareer Writing excerpt. Courtesy the author

CKE: The part about not being offensive also seems to be related to people being overly politically correct and the entire era of woke culture—without judging whether or not you should be woke. What are the origins of this soothing aesthetics?

FS: I think it’s just a regurgitation of aesthetics. If you think about it being related to the original current of ambient music in the early 2000s, it’s actually pre-digital soothing, since society developed the OG Ambient aesthetics after a huge presence of rave culture where things felt more aggressive. And you always have highs and lows in shifts of culture. In the present, there was a domination of rap music and trap, which was very exaggerated and somehow baroque around 2015/16. Then, as we approached the 2020s, the world needed some calmer aesthetics. I think that every shift in culture reciprocates the past.

CKE: With the term aura, you’re also referencing Walter Benjamin. Is your definition taking his concept further or is it an antithesis?

FS: I come from a critical studies background, so for me Walter Benjamin has always been this kind of umbrella philosopher. This aura thing I put together was almost a way of making fun of Benjamin. I studied in London during a time where you had a lot of pseudo-intellectuals who were adopting post-Marxism and deconstructing philosophy. Critical thinking was very charged when I studied. And I found it so boring. I didn’t want to be confined by those men from the postwar period. So, appropriating his term was almost like, “fuck Walter Benjamin” or “fuck people who think that Walter Benjamin is still the greatest intellectual.”

LEFT: Portrait of Federico Sargentone. Courtesy the author

RIGHT: Midcareer Writing excerpt. Courtesy the author

CKE: As a creative producer and someone who works with content, how do you navigate this priority of context over content when you work on concepts that are supposed to include content? And when you communicate with brands, do you also feel that a lot of their goals are just vibes? Many don’t really know what they want.

FS: Yes, 100 percent. For a brand to know what they want today is almost the same as knowing what people want. And people don’t know what they want. They want a little bit of this and little bit of that—auras from multiple spheres. And so, the brands are the same. Not to see things in a binary way, but I think there are two types of brands in the world: there are vision-led brands and people- or audience-led brands. And the latter don’t know what they want because they don’t know who their new consumer is anymore. There are several streams of consumers, and some brands want to please all of them at the same time.

And then there is a problem between content and context—also in the sense that they don’t know what the context is. If you don’t know your context, who is going to look at your content? You won’t be able to craft a story that is impactful enough without it. When it comes to vision-led brands, they are more deliberate in what they want to communicate, and that’s the strength of those brands. There are not many brands like that because most just mirror and produce content that people want to consume, which is not very strong in my opinion.

CKE: I think the not knowing what they want also relates to the crisis many brands face with regards to their creative directors. You could even take this further and look at the luxury market’s general crisis. In another chapter, you talk about how culture indicators change since culture continuously evolves, and how products, especially in the luxury market, therefore have a cycle of exhaustion.

FS: It’s all about where you want to belong. This is very stupid and basic, but I’ll get deeper. To think that people today are still confined to the objects they consume is a bit silly. Think of a pool of objects, for example, a keychain, a bag, a pair of shoes, and some socks. They are not markers of your personality anymore. I mean, to a degree, they always will be—you choose to wear Nike or you choose to wear Under Armour. Those are two very different choices because logos and brands are still tools. But when it comes to the actual objects, you don’t care if the Under Armour jacket is better made unless you’re maybe a pro athlete with specific technical needs.

In the luxury market, everything is transient, and everything can be quickly replaced. You can replace a Louis Vuitton bag with a Prada bag. But if you choose to wear Prada, you’re choosing to wear the brand, not the bag. In a market that is completely fixated on products, nobody buys a product because it’s well-made—also because they’re not. The secondhand market is a great example because you’re fine to wear a used garment—even if it’s a little bit broken or scratched—because of the brand. Most of us will wear a Prada jacket with a scratch because you’re wearing Prada. The brand is the aura of the fashion.

Midcareer Writing excerpt. Courtesy the author

CKE: Which brings me to the one-million-dollar question: How do you think brands can get out of this identity crisis? Do you think we need to return to more exclusivity in the luxury market, since this got lost, in great part, through social media?

FS: Exclusivity is a big word today, but I think it’s more about desirability. With brands, you can say that a campaign featuring their products makes the brand more desirable but if you look at the market today, everything is replaceable, creative directors shift like every year. And it’s almost as if all brands become the same—if you can change a creative director so quickly, then it becomes another brand under another creative direction. I think this sort of flattening is also product related. You have to build desire to make people consume that product; you have to make it something people cannot live without. This is a very complex situation in a world of images since objects have less impact. You have to leverage the desirability of your brand but also push people into the stores. Just like on Instagram, it’s leveraging those two: the material that is the brand and the material that is the outputs they produce.

CKE: The book also includes a list of all the different jobs you have had in your career from gallery assistant to creative director. Was it an intentional choice to have that many different jobs? I suppose this is also exaggerated to some extent, but it’s very much connected to the economic and social precarity present in the industry, which is often glamorized.

FS: That list was a bit of a provocation. It’s very schematic. I jump right into the topic, also in form. This form was very brutal, and so I wanted to exaggerate it as much as I could. But still, everything listed there is true. Sometimes, I’ve done multiple of those roles together through agglomeration and synergy. One day you can wake up and be the published writer and have an interview in a magazine and the next day, you’re giving feedback on three videos that you shot last week. And when I was younger, I was doing many chores and assisting roles, but then everything merged into one person, and I became a professional. What I wanted to say with that part is that a lot of the people in this industry need to wear multiple hats and need to negotiate their agency and their work in so many roles.

So, this is a comment on practicality. It’s a comment on how the industry, as you said, gets glamorized from the outside. But when you live on the inside, it’s a real job and a true profession. Not everybody can succeed; you have to juggle and do many things. Also, I don’t come from a very privileged background when it comes to money, so for me, it was impossible to declare, “Okay, I will be a writer for the rest of my life.” I needed to do multiple things. This speaks to a condition of many, but it’s also very personal for me.

Midcareer Writing excerpt. Courtesy the author

CKE: In this same chapter you also talk about the currencies that these different job titles are driven by. In general, you would maybe assume that people work for money, but in this context, people often just work for prestige or the title, which is, of course, a huge privilege.

FA: I’ve been in the professional world for a bit, and I’ve seen many people—super nice people—who didn’t have to work for money. They had to work for status. But I think that for you to perform well in your profession, you have to be driven by a pool of things. I listed status, cultural capital, and money—these are the three variables that come into the equation of work.

Like with brands and products, if you have a good balance between them, and if you are driven by a good combination, you can work successfully, and you can be true to yourself. I would be a stupid and silly human if I told you that I don’t want cultural capital and status, too. But it’s not the main driver for me in the equation of work.