Performance & Props

What happens when a marketplace transforms a sacred tool of structural validation into a low-friction subscription service? In this episode of Performance & Props , marketing researcher Rahul Devinder Malik takes you back to the year 1215 on the rain-soaked, muddy fields of Central England. There, a royal messenger carries a piece of parchment destined to change the entire course of Western hi...

What happens when a marketplace decides that raw truth is a liability? In this episode of Performance & Props , marketing researcher Rahul Devinder Malik takes you back to the year 1770 on a rugged hilltop in the English Lake District. There, wealthy aristocrats engaged in a highly bizarre ritual: turning their backs on real sunsets to gaze at reality through a small, smoke-colored convex mirr...

What happens when a piece of glass in your pocket shifts from an instrument of outward documentation to a machine of real-time identity construction? In this premier episode of Performance & Props , marketing researcher Rahul Devinder Malik traces the hidden lineage of self-curation back to the winter of 1500. There, a twenty-eight-year-old artist named Albrecht Dürer engaged in a radical act...

In this foundational trailer for Performance & Props , marketing professor Rahul Devinder Malik challenges everything you’ve been taught about consumer behaviour. We like to believe our purchases are practical, but in the modern " Identity Economy ," utility is just a cover story. The truth is much more theatrical: we aren't accumulating products; we are collecting props to survive a digital w...