Anonymous Advertising Takeover In Amsterdam

We were just sent this ad takeover from an anonymous artist in Amsterdam. It is always interesting to see how much of this kind of "illegal" activity is happening around the world and how people are thinking critically about their relationship to commercial messages. Along with these images came a small blurb from the artist which I thought was worth including in this post. The artist is clearly critical of his or her work and understands that beyond getting rid of outdoor advertising, they are demanding a space that is "pro freedom and expression of the people." Thanks again to all those artists taking the time to challenge outdoor advertising's use of the public environment. Keep up the good work and continue to send us your imagery.

Being a graffiti/street artist with an activist background, the stuff that I do in the streets is very varied. But always one of my projects has been hijacking the space in the small billboards behind glass, the so called 'abri's, owned by JCDecaux, at least if they contained posters of commercial companies that want us to buy more stuff. Sometimes I replaced the posters with my own message, sometimes I just alter the poster itself. I attached some images of where I used origami to take the original poster and transform it into something different. It needs a minimum amount of time and materials, and it is great fun. However after some times I left this idea, as it doesn't seem to really work. The image of the abri with an origamied poster in it is just not challenging enough, it doesn't really stand out. I also had trouble thinking in which origami shape I should fold it, eventually I just used a star, being a kind of neutral but recognisable shape. Of course the message is more in folding it than in the specific folded shape, but still every shape I would take would be a bit random. However, still I thought sharing these images with you would be worthwhile. At the moment I am thinking of new ways to change these posters. It is not on a big scale at all but I believe someone needs to do it every once in a while, against commercial ads and pro freedom and expression of the people.