Jesse Stagg (born 1970) is a leading trafficker in culture with a background in art direction, design, advertising, guerilla marketing, and strategic branding.
Born in New York, educated in London and Cape Town, he was raised in a Sufi community in England.
A third-generation filmmaker and Creative in the entertainment industry, he began his career at advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather RSTM in Cape Town, South Africa.
After leaving Ogilvy & Mather, Stagg started a design and marketing consultancy focused on event marketing and creating large scale events around music. In 1990 he founded UFO Collective with Carl Mason, South Africa's first Rave organization and subsequently the highly influential dance club Club Eden, followed by a second club "Uforia". UFO's numerous events and venues helped lay the foundation for the emerging South African Electronica scene, and the indigenous forms of Techno known as Kwaito and played a small part in the early social re-integration of the Post-Apartheid rave generation.
During the 90s Stagg produced and created events throughout South Africa and the United States. Beginning with the "World Peace Party" (1990), the first rave in Africa, and ending with Leonardo DiCaprio's millennium eve party in 2000.
He returned to the design business in 1994 as a senior art-director at Hanna-Barbera/Cartoon Network Studios overseeing successful launches of Dexter's Lab, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, The Powerpuff Girls and others of the Emmy winning World Premiere Toons on Cartoon Network.
He went on to work as an Art-Director at Disney Online then moved to Paramount Studios as Creative Services Manager. He later joined Burbank based “Feed The Monster Media”, as senior Art-Director producing award winning and nominated web sites for CBS/Infinity radio stations KROQ/LA, KCBS[disambiguation needed], and LIVE105.
In 1999 Stagg's cartoon The 7th Portal was produced by Marvel's legendary chairman Stan Lee. On its release in 2000, it broke records for an online series, and in doing so coined the phrase "webisodes". The 7th Portal VR theme park ride later broke attendance records at Paramount Parks.
From 2003 to 2005, Stagg was the communications chair of the Graphic Arts Council of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). During his tenure, the council inaugurated "Into The Pixel", the first video game art awards, and commissioned works by artists Shepard Fairey, Artemio Rodriguez, Salomón Huerta, and Kenny Scharf.
in 2006 Stagg was a consultant on Banksy's critically acclaimed Barely Legal show in Los Angeles. The show ignited a firestorm of controversy due to the inclusion of Tai - a live Indian elephant centerpiece hand-painted the color of wallpaper. Barely Legal was a breakthrough for the UK artist and was attended by up to 30,000 people over 3 days and featured heavily in all mass media.
Jesse Stagg lives in Los Angeles, California, where he consults and lectures on the intersection of design, entertainment and technology.
External links
- ucla D|MA
- no easy rave to freedom
- African Electronica
- Iraq war billboard protest
- Cartoon Network campaign
- Banksy
~*~ Jesse Stagg boomslang@earthlink.net 323 719 3519 947½ N Vendome St Los Angeles, CA 90026
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