Paper Spaceship Post Update

After being hounded by angry media magnates we would like to update our recent post on the local art that is going up on NPA's empty boards.

We recieved the below email earlier this morning from the president of an outdoor advertising firm in NY. Apparently they think we are responsible for the Bill Dunlap prints which went up recently on empty NPA boards.

I think you should apply for a permit with the city to put up art. You really have NO right to decorate these whited-out NPA boards. It is illegal and your artists should be fined for their efforts. If you don’t like the boards, then there should be a PublicAd campaign to take them down, fix the walls, and recycle the material for the venues. You think that those wrinkled Bill Dunlap graphics, repeated over and over on those bards looks nice? You actually think that this is acceptable? I think they look worse than the worst of NPA’s bad wheat paste jobs. So now what? What if artists start putting pornography up there? What if graffiti artists start tagging all those boards with their “art”? What is the criteria and why are you so visibly in charge? Why are you doing this? Is the goal to remove ads, or have white walls for your artists to paint on? I assume it is the latter. And with letting artists go crazy on these boards, is potentially going to make the whole city look like the Lower East Side. I personally like the Lower East Side but not everyone does. You are opening a can of worms. Just hope you like worms.

First, I would like to say that PublicAdCampaign has nothing to do with the Paper Spaceship campaign. Another local company with ties to the art community has taken this opportunity to promote local artists while gaining themselves some street credibility. We posted it on our site because we thought it was nice to see these boards being used by NYC artists now that the ad content had come down. What we were unaware of is that in the upper right hand corner of each of those posters is a small logo directing you to Paper Spaceships website.

This is not good and if you are an artist that is thinking of submitting your work for this campaign, I would highly suggest you ask that this logo be left off the posters. The reason for this is simple, it makes these posters advertisements. Art in public spaces is much stronger when the author is unknown. The reason for this is that when a viewer stumbles upon work which is not authored, he or she is presented with a gift which asks for nothing in return. This gift with no purpose allows the viewer to get something without anything being taken from them. The problem with advertising is that it uses public space to get something out of the viewer, product purchase and the manipulation of your desires. These artworks, despite being less manipulative than traditional advertising are still promotional and in the end are less affective at creating a bond between public individuals than they would be if the logo was left off. It is for this reason that I never put a name, logo, or website on my work. In the end it may be a poor marketing idea for my personal work but in the end that is not what using public space is about.