Adhesives for tapes come from animals and plants. In the nineteenth century, rubber was the main component of adhesives; in modern times, various polymers are widely used. The rubber industry is a prime example of the plundering and enslavement of the resources and labor of developing countries by developed countries. The modern application of tape polymer is PVDC, which was used primarily in military packaging in World War II and is still an indispensable material for military food packaging. Tape is an extremely common tool for repair and creation. It is moldable and can be wrapped, bonded, and formed into the shape I want. In a set of experiments around tape, I will randomly bond different objects, including repairing broken objects, binding multiple objects, or simply attaching the tape to a flat surface.

By extending this set of experiments, this paper explores the vortex of demand caused by value binding in the postmodern society. In this paper's view, consumerism, by making rules for each link, wraps up the cycle from problem posing to problem solving, creating the satisfaction and enjoyment in problem solving, and combating any arose possibilities or alternative factors. Any commodity that travels down this commodity chain toward the bottom must follow the rules of these links step by step, classifying different needs, creating different solutions, and setting levels of satisfaction. Through the tape, I touch on the intersection between internal and extra capitalism - a paradoxical bonding. It operates in and against consumerism. These observations are crucial to how to disengage from the wave of consumerism under the postmodern.

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Clarity as Good  

In one of the experiments, I taped the pen and eraser together to form a combination of metal, rubber and paper products (fig. 1). This combination is a very forced bond, with the bright yellow tape combining the rectangle used for erasing handwriting and the metal column used for writing into a single unit. I can use the pencil and eraser alternately by reversing the top and bottom poles of this combination. When I tried to do regular writing with the pen, I felt a strong instability of gravity and needed to fight the gravity of the eraser to complete the writing, but overall it did not interfere with use. The tape that connects the pen to the eraser can peel off easily and does not leave marks on the pencil or eraser. The peel-off tape is easy to tear. It is not very sticky and requires multiple layers of wrapping to ensure that the pencil and eraser are held together properly.

The formal elements of this piece largely remind me of commodities, especially the buy-one-get-one-free (BOGO Free) marketing approach. The color of the tape makes the act of "tying" very visible and seductive. But I'm not just referring to the BOGO Free on physical items like a chocolate bar, but also to the functional overlay. This discovery redefined the concept of tape as a tool and instead gave it the ability to create and define new commodities. I, playing a labor force role now, am not creating any new function at this moment, but I am indeed creating a new commodity. The bond of the pen's writability and the eraser’s erasability gave birth to a new combination of goods that became a new standard and basis for subsequent product design.

Product design, as a way to solve a problem, is also constantly creating needs while defining better and worse ways of living.  Functional combinations led by product design are formal, decent, and can become a new form of commodity independent from those being bonded. It will improve the quality of life of the user, while defining what is a better product and a more worthwhile life experience for a capitalist society. Capitalist societies are constantly creating new goods worth consuming, even if they are sometimes just multiple collages of existing goods. In this process, the function of the commodity is specialized as its unique property, prohibiting the possibility of the flow across commodities. As a person with a high quality of life, it becomes a social consensus on what should be used under what circumstances.

In contrast, it goes without saying that any crude, fluid, informal alternative would be disdained and ostracized by capitalism and consumerism. Jugaad, introduced by Amit S. Rai in Jugaad Time, is an ad hoc practice that aims to reach an alternative by using materials that are available around. For example, strap a sofa to the back of a motorcycle to simulate a car, and put a crate pad in the back of a car to replace a leaky rear wheel. Jugaad has been embraced by Indians as an indispensable part of their culture as a wisdom of frugal living and a spiritual treasure. Sulekha, an emerging and expanding digital platform for local service businesses in India, has promoted the Anti-jugaad movement. Sulekha's critique of Jugaad creates the illusion of the use of commodities to achieve class advancement. In the ads, Sulekha mocks the patchwork, makeshift, and sometimes ugly appearance of Jugaad, isolating the functional nature of the product in a wave of commodity aesthetics, and packaging rigid thinking into a purportedly more "professional" and "formal" solution. "Jugaad is an informal way of bonding, mending and giving new functions to existing objects, avoiding any additional consumption and solving existing needs, breaking the concept of bundled sales and the constant hype of new products.

Jugaad as Paid

Another way of Anti-Jugaad is to participate in the market disguised as Jugaad. Kinesiology taping (fig. 2) is a treatment method discovered in Japan in the 1970's. It was first introduced to the United States in 1995 and then to Europe in 1996. It claims that immobilizing the injured area by manually manipulating the Kinesio tape improves the effectiveness of treatment. The tape opened up more informal possibilities for treatment, and formal treatment protocols were developed based on the possibilities. Until today, the use of Kinesio tape in sports is popular, helping athletes with many problems, such as promoting muscles, inhibiting pain, enhancing healing, and improving lymphatic drainage and blood flow. Bonding damaged muscles through adhesive tape has become a Jugaad-style rehabilitation program, and ordinary people can enjoy the same muscle physiotherapy as athletes by doing it themselves, without having to seek expensive therapists.  

However, according to a review published in the journal Sports Medicine of evidence from 10 research papers on Kinesio tape for the treatment and prevention of sports injuries, there is little high-quality evidence to support the use of Kinesio tape to manage or prevent sports injuries. in order for the tape to be truly effective. As a response, Kinesio officials argue that practitioners who are not certified or extensively trained in the Kinesio recording method are not guaranteed to perform the tape's true effectiveness. In some studies explaining the mechanism of Kinesio tape, it is mentioned that it may have a significant placebo effect. Participants who have greater confidence in Kinesio tape may benefit from encouragement to use their innate self-regulation skills for maximum therapeutic effect. The prevailing interpretation of placebo at this stage is that any intervention will elicit a placebo response, which has complex cultural and contextual elements. And when is Kinesio influential enough to become a cultural element?

Kinesio tape first came to public attention with a close-up shot of American Kerry Walsh's shoulder during the 2008 Beijing Olympics relay of the women's beach volleyball tournament (Fig. 3). This grand marketing campaign involved every process in the sports industry. The Beijing Olympics realized a profit of 1.6 billion dollars, with more than 20 percent coming from sponsors and donations, including 50,000 rolls of tape donated by Kinesio. Many of these athletes were happy to use it, apparently believing - or hoping - that such decoration  would bring some benefit to their affected body parts. The bright colors of the Kinesio tape became its own advertisement in close-ups of all the athletes who wore it, such as Li Na and Balotelli. These Olympic sports stars are at the forefront of the world of sports and have a strong appeal and influence with a good social image, high visibility, and high attention span. Under the influence of the spokesman benefits, the tape on the sports stars becomes a persuasive cue for  self-promotion among the audience until they achieve great marketing and commercial success of capitalism.

Kinesio created the illusion of extending the adhesive for repairing broken objects to repairing human functions, and used athlete celebrities to create a great promotional opportunity. In the context of sports commercialization, Kinesio first targeted market vacancies and then pinpointed target markets and promotional opportunities, using professional and credible athletes as promotional vehicles to quickly open up the consumer market, which in turn boosted product sales. More importantly, through the Olympics, Kinesio packaged the tape as a cutting-edge, professional fix. The principle of tape is simple and easy to understand, and Kinesio used the bonding of a fluid function to create a completely new commodity. In the language of an easy-to-understand function, the public's trust in tape's restorative capabilities was transferred to Kinesio. In this case of Anti-Jugaad disguised as Jugaad, consumerism first imprisons the consumer's imagination about bonding and then uses their instinctive pursuit of bonding to package a commercial scam known as Kinesio.

Covering as Proclamation

At the same time, consumerism diverted or consumed the victims' energy from exploring outlets.  Three artists, Alexander Khokhlov, Veronica Ershova, and Stanislav Swoboda, explore another possibility in the healing process, showing the aesthetic side of kinesiological taping - a heroic aesthetic created with medical paraphernalia. In one work (fig. 4), artists present a pair of black hands, the left hand grasping the wrist of the right hand. The right hand is in the middle of the image, and the left hand extends from the bottom right, holding the right hand in the center, forming a spiral composition that gives the whole image an upward trend. The image is full of details, delicate yet realistic. The skin is not completely smooth; the palm lines and pores are clear, and the nails are painted with nail polish in the same color scheme as the skin tone. There are three different shapes and colors of tape compiled on the arms and arms, each in a highly saturated fluorescent color that contrasts with the dark skin tone and almost jumps out of the picture. The tape is taped into lines with curves to visualize the muscular direction, further enhancing the rising trend of the image. In addition, this image uses a solid-colored background, using warm tones of the same shade as the skin tones. The perimeter of the image, especially the upper half, has dark corners to help focus the viewer's gaze on the center of the image and the fluorescent-colored kinesiology straps.  

The various high-contrast visual languages present a sense of power, so much so that I forget about the injury and healing session behind the tape and instead appreciate a kinesiological aesthetic. The conflict that arises between this aesthetic and the therapeutic function of Kinesio tape is very appealing to me. How does Kinesio tape, as a therapeutic tool, transform a wound into an elegant, classical aesthetic that has a confrontation with the body?

Many sports activities carry an inherent risk of injury, but voluntarily accepting the possibility of injury is a sign of an athlete's courage and dedication. Research published in the journal Communication & Sport by Clemson University researchers Jimmy Sanderson and Melinda Weathers examines health and safety issues in sports. Not playing during an injury is often seen as weak and lacking the toughness required by soccer, while playing with an injury is often seen as the behavior of a warrior who embodies sportsmanship. Violence and sacrificing one's body to cause pain has become part of the competitive sports experience, and Jimmy and Melinda examine print media coverage of two injuries to NFL quarterbacks. Media coverage of players who decide to sit out and play with injuries carries a different tone that may influence players' future decisions and fans' attitudes toward those players.

Against this backdrop, Kinesio tape and the injuries behind it become a symbol and attitude in the athlete's body. In contrast to hiding any taping areas so as not to create the impression of weakness, many contemporary athletes do the exact opposite with Kinesio tape. For many, it appears to be a badge of honor. The Olympic slogan Citius, Altius, Fortius under capitalism has taken on another meaning, driven by records, prizes, and placements, to pursue to be more efficient, to progress, to outperform others rather than oneself. The pain endured in the pursuit of ranking was considered heroic, even a necessary step for success, and Kinesio captures this by ostentatiously glorifying injury and flaunting it. Its colors, graphics, minimalism, and composition are proudly self-assuring, self-branding, and self-promoting, as the artist attempts to demonstrate in this series of images, by highlighting their exclusive commitment to athletics through this "interesting visual cocktail." As a result, Kinesio's original therapeutic function is bonded to the sacrificial narrative, and the primitive meaning is bonded to the socialized meaning, prompting groups of athletes to take pride in the tape they have affixed. This is essentially capitalism's domestication of laborers and voluntary self-consumption through the glorification of pain.

Bond as Outlet

How to find an outlet for consumerism? The existing in-crack-quest was answered in another experiment I did: repairing a torn piece of paper with tape (fig. 5). In this experiment, the tape ran back and forth through the cracks in the white paper, weaving the separated left and right sides together again. The bright yellow tape looks like a patch that doesn't match the color of the clothes, reminding me that it was repaired. The surface of the tape is washi paper, a rough texture that allows me to write on the surface, just like paper. It was placed on a black transparent platform that was not very clean. When I picked it up, I could still feel it would break from the cracks, but once I put it back on the table, it would be flat again.

The tape acted as an adhesive on this occasion, repairing and piecing together the broken paper. The tape proved that the breakage was not irreparable, as the paper held together by the tape could be used as usual. However, the repair was not complete. Even with the tape, the broken paper could not become intact.

During the Great Depression, people found hundreds of uses for tape, from repairing clothes to protecting eggs. In that era of consumerism decline, people used tape to bond the rags of the present into the memories of the past. Lauren Berlant mentions transition as an intermediate state of reconciliation, the emergence of contradictions and flexible adjustments as a way to inspire new life. This coincides with my concept of bonding. In the paper-tape model, if broken paper is analogized to a gradually decaying consumer society, then tape can correspond to this theory as a post-consumer social consumption habit bonded to the foundation of consumer society. As it turns out, we are not very good at distinguishing transitional moments in real time. Without being noticed, existing consumption habits have gradually begun to cease to support the prerequisites of being a consumer society due to changes in demographics, household income dynamics, and the consumption preferences of the new generation. As a manifestation of this, a variety of alternative buying habits and retail strategies have emerged.

Bonding can be a solution to cope with declining consumerism and help us reinvent a post-consumerist era. The decline of consumerism has promoted more collaborative consumption and self-sufficiency. Collaborative consumption, sharing economy, self-making, nostalgia aesthetics, vintage culture and other markets around multi-participation and secondary use of goods have emerged. Multiple types of bonding are occurring, especially circumventing the power of capital and uniting consumers and consumers outside of the marketplace. The value of used items and former aesthetics is being rediscovered. Second-hand markets for goods have come online, where consumers can sell, exchange and buy products and services. Swap activity has also been on the rise, especially for clothing and accessories. Traditional shopping options are already giving way to Internet-driven commerce. In general, sharing and second-hand are becoming less stigmatized.

Why can the bonding of the past be an alternative after the decline? The coupling between it and the existing consumerism begs the question: Are they Anti-jugaad in the form of a new Jugaad in disguise, or do they still retain some traces of bonding because they cannot be completely cut off from the status quo? In vintage culture, the audience distinguishes between the concept of vintage and second-hand. Second-hand is not necessarily vintage, but vintage must have the function of assuming a heritage. They don't want vintage to be compared to second-hand. Only what is truly dated and no longer in production can be called "vintage". Vintage is clothing that will not go out of style in the past, present or future. The best vintage clothes are often from 1920-1980 and are no longer in production. They carry a different historical and cultural significance, are rare and unique, and do not easily become overwhelmed by fashion. Now, vintage has become a mature market, which even contains a luxury branch. Since then, I have seen a twiced bonding occurring between consumerism and bonded schemes, a variant of consumer society that occurs in an incomplete post-consumer society. Here, the process of secondary use of objects is weakened and replaced by new packaging and marketing strategies built on old objects.

At the same time, we must pay attention to the brightness of the tape; a single color of bonding is not enough. Most of the current bond schemes only consider universal fixes, a Jugaad type of aura, and do not continue to develop on this scheme. The increased popularity of shared systems in the dominant culture is not without its complications. A mature counterpart requires more polish. Fairness needs to be considered in the design of sharing programs - preferably with the participation of likely users. Currently, this is often an afterthought in formal sharing programs such as bike and car sharing programs, where credit cards or prepaid fees/deposits are typical, effectively excluding low-income people.

A consumer society is not a sustainable society, and the consequences of overconsumption are beginning to be seen. How the concept of bonding can be used to reshape a post-consumer society and build on the bonding-inspired foundation deserves more discussion.

Berlant, Lauren. “The Commons: Infrastructures for Troubling Times*.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space34, no. 3 (2016): 393–419. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775816645989. 

Cohen, Maurie J. “The Decline and Fall of Consumer Society? Implications for Theories of Modernization.” Global Modernization Review, 2015, 33–40. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814616072_0004. 

Hughes, Robert, and Jay Coakley. “Positive Deviance among Athletes: The Implications of Overconformity to the Sport Ethic.” Sociology of Sport Journal 8, no. 4 (1991): 307–25. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.8.4.307. 

Kinesio. “What Is the Kinesio Taping Method?” Kinesio, March 27, 2022. https://kinesiotaping.com/about/what-is-the-kinesio-taping-method/. 

Locke, Tim. “Kinesio Tape for Athletes: A Big Help, or Hype?” WebMD. WebMD, July 3, 2012. https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/features/kinesio-tape-athletes-help-hype. 

Luz Júnior, Maurício A., Manoel V. Sousa, Luciana A. Neves, Aline A. Cezar, and Leonardo O. Costa. “Kinesio Taping® Is Not Better than Placebo in Reducing Pain and Disability in Patients with Chronic Non-Specific Low Back Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Brazilian Journal of Physical Therapy 19, no. 6 (2015): 482–90. https://doi.org/10.1590/bjpt-rbf.2014.0128. 

Maurie J. Cohen, “The Decline and Fall of Consumer Society? Implications for Theories of Modernization,” Global Modernization Review, 2015, pp. 33-40, https://doi.org/ 10.1142/9789814616072_0004.

Rai, Amit. Jugaad Time: The Pragmatics of Everyday Hacking in India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019. 

Sanderson, Jimmy, Melinda Weathers, Alexia Grevious, Maggie Tehan, and Samantha Warren. “A Hero or Sissy? Exploring Media Framing of NFL Quarterbacks Injury Decisions.” Communication & Sport 4, no. 1 (March 2016): 3–22. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/2167479514536982. 

Xinhua. “Beijing Olympics' Profit Exceeds 1b Yuan.” Beijing Olympics' profit exceeds 1B Yuan, June 19, 2009. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2009-06/19/content_8302950.htm. 

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