How did continuous warfare become normal in the 21st century? How did police start using military hardware to manage ordinary crowds? Jill Gibbon’s new book Gifts from the Arms Trade offers an answer with a glimpse inside arms trade fairs, where the world’s most lethal tanks, missiles and fighter jets are promoted with cute gifts. Posing as a security consultant in a suit and pearls, she has been given stress balls in the shape of bombs, toy soldiers, squashy fighter jets, and sweets in wrappers saying, ‘welcome to hell’. The book presents nearly a hundred gifts from arms fairs, showing how weapons are promoted as products, and war as a sales opportunity.
“Looking at first glance like a catalogue of party favours for small children – sweets and chocolates, small toys, rubber ducks and a plush teddy bear – this book in fact inventories corporate promotional giveaways from international arms fairs. Under a new name and fabricated identity, Jill Gibbon has surreptitiously attended military trade shows for two decades, and Gifts from the Arms Trade documents her undercover reporting from that secretive and tightly guarded world. Presenting a natural history of necrocapitalist marketing and taxonomy of swag in an economy of continuous warfare, Gibbon demonstrates that these branded promotional items are giveaways in both sense of the word: freebies, as well as things that reveal more than they intend. Gift, we are reminded, means “poison” in German. Against all the invitations to chew and suck and squeeze, one item stands out: a snipped strand of souvenir razor wire.” Craig Dworkin
Design: Ashleigh Armitage, Photography: Ricky Adam, Published by information as material