VIDEO PRODUCTION, GLOBAL LAUNCH EVENTS, INTERNATIONAL RETAIL INSTALLATION

Nike Sportswear (NSW) is the sixth and most recently launched key category of the Nike brand, and along with the other five categories will be responsible for 75 percent of all future growth. NSW is the brand’s first premium line where Nike meets street culture and, by extension, other outdoor and action sports.

Nike Global hired Dissident as the sole interpreter of what a Nike Sportswear vision might look like, both in print and in video, as it would be launched to the press in the fall 2008. Using the Robert Wilson Video Portraits as a model, Dissident brought together an international pre-production/production/post-production team to create a series of high definition Video Portraits. The subjects of these Video Portraits are key youth culture icons of Nike endorsement and other iconic products from the company’s history up through the 2008 line. As videos and stills that straddle both the commercial and art world in startling ways, these works have met with widespread enthusiasms from the fashion, sport, art, and business communities.

At the 2008 Beijing launch event where these videos premiered, Nike President and CEO Mark Parker was quoted as saying, "I have never seen product handled as art such as this. I have never seen images so vivid."

The second key component of NSW’s 2008 launch was featuring Dissident’s Beautiful Losers in multiple NSW branded and sponsored events. From private screenings, to DIY workshops that used the film and its artists as instructors, NSW saw Dissident’s projects as a means of underscoring the contributions and influence of American youth culture and also illuminating a future direction for Nike Sportswear.