‘The exploding plastic inevitable’: ‘Branding being’, brand Warhol & the factory years

•Brands as sites of identity work and social convergence.•Warhol's Factory and other such artistic enclaves as spaces of social formation.•Relations of connectivity nurturing conditions suggestive of new branding forms.•‘Branding being’ as a social technology of affective investment.•Brand ecosystems as seedbeds of network sociality.

SummaryThis paper contributes to theories of brands as sites of identity work and convergence. It takes as its subject relations of belonging and participation as they shape communal ‘scenes’ out of which spring intimations of spaces of cultural production as branding ecosystems. To illustrate ways in which this line of thought ignites discourses on branding as a mode of relational being, we explore the social environment fomented around Warhol's court, ‘The Factory’, that iconic symbol of the mediated logic of his oeuvre. Drawing on archival accounts of Factory life, we explore cultural production as illustrative of brands and branding as social technologies exciting the imaginary and its theater of possibility. And to understand how collective consumption of relations of connectivity nurture conditions suggestive of new branding forms, we consider the existential logic of ‘branding being’, of thinking ‘spaces’ made available through branding as a mode of relational being.