Corrected Billboard Supports U.S. Military at Guantanamo Bay

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 23, 2013 - San Francisco, California

Corrected Billboard Supports U.S. Military at Guantanamo Bay

The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has unveiled a new billboard campaign to support U.S. military personnel serving at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
On April 22, 2013

the CDC successfully apprehended and rehabilitated a San Francisco billboard between Potrero Avenue and U.S. Highway 101, near 19th Street. The CDC released the corrected ad to support our colleagues in the U.S. military who have recently come under scrutiny for their practices at Guantanamo Bay. The CDC’s red and white billboard asks in larger-than-life type, CAN YOU NAME 5 TYPES OF TORTURE? Fine-print text responds, WE CAN…GREETINGS FROM GUANTANAMO BAY.

The liberated ad can be seen on the CDC website at www.CorrectionsDepartment.org.

As a private correctional institution, the CDC recognizes the challenges faced by U.S. military personnel in the efficient maintenance and administration of prison facilities under disruptive conditions. More than half of Guantanamo detainees are currently on hunger strike to protest their open-ended detention without trial or charges. Initiated on February 6, 2013, the protest was sparked by a search of Korans and other inmate belongings, which were mishandled, according to detainees. The rapidly escalating strike now involves 84 of 166 detainees. Six detainees have been hospitalized while 16 others are being force-fed with tubes threaded through their noses and into their stomachs.

With limited medical personnel on duty at Guantanamo, the U.S. military is rushing dozens of supplemental staff to the detention facility. The CDC commends the sacrifices made by these doctors, nurses and medics in response to the crisis at the U.S. Naval Base. Force-feeding creates stressful conditions for overtaxed medical personnel who are now obligated to perform additional responsibilities, reducing time for their previous duties, such as coerced, unnecessary operations and the disclosure of confidential medical records with interrogators.

Force-feeding also creates dangerous working conditions for military police officers in the Immediate Reaction Force, who must subdue and restrain a detainee prior to his meal. Such burdens exacerbate potential threats to officer safety, which include the risk of ankle sprains incurred while jumping on detainees, repetitive stress injuries from throwing bound inmates into walls or respiratory complications from pepper spray and caustic agents doused over shackled inmates.

Upon taking office in 2009, President Obama declared his intention to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Despite a limited number of detainee transfers out of the prison, no action has been taken to shut the facility, leaving camp personnel with the prospect of supervising uncooperative detainees indefinitely.

The corrected billboard is currently at liberty and seems to have successfully readjusted to public life. However, this ad will remain under surveillance by department staff to prevent recidivism and any potential lapse into prior criminal behavior.

Founded in 1994, the CDC is a private correctional facility that protects the public through the secure management, discipline and rehabilitation of California's advertising. The department was initiated by individuals who felt that public correctional facilities were insufficiently managing the state's most criminal elements and that effective care and treatment would improve under the supervision of a private institution.

For more information on the department’s operations and programs, contact the CDC Office of Communications at cdc@revolutionist.com.

The Kids Are All Right!

NEKO, Madrid

Despite the fact that the issue of advertising using public space to spread commercial messages that in turn have gross negative affects on our society, isn't really being adressed these days, I am heartened to see such a healthy dose of artistic action on the streets that pays no mind to the legal basis upon which these ads come to exist on our streets. The city is ours and the messages we choose to surround ourselves with are a reflection of who we are collectively. We should be ecstatic that citizens take the time and effort to bring us something other.

Lister, Sydney

NEKO, Madrid

L.A.’s Digital Billboards Go Dark. What’s Next?

VIA: Ban Billboard Blight

Does anyone out there believe that the final chapter of the city’s digital billboard saga has been written? That the collection of black billboard faces pasted into the visual landscape like minimalist art pieces is Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor’s farewell gesture to long-suffering residents of the city? More [HERE]

Most of Los Angeles's Digital Billboards Have Now Gone Dark

LA has been waging a war against Clear Channel Outdoor for nearly 6 years now, a battle which has cost the city unimaginable amounts of money. Finally today those offending digital signs which are at the center of this debacle have gone dark by court order. While I am happy to see the city of LA take back control its streets from a company who essentially thought it was above the law, I am disheartened that this battle has been waged due to the illegality of the signage and not more ideological issues about advertisings place on our city streets. One battle at a time I guess as I look forward to NPA, and CPI, finally packing their bags from NY and heading back to a city which supports its illegal flyposting business. 

VIA: LA Curbed

Notice a lack of blinky flashiness on the roads yesterday? That's because billboard companies Clear Channel Outdoors and CBS Outdoors actually turned off their digital billboards yesterday, per court order. The move is just the latest in the long-running and surprisingly kind of dramatic battle between billboard companies, other billboard companies, and the city. CBS and Clear Channel put up about 100 signs...More [HERE]

Lister Bus Shelter #2

Looks like Lister is having fun with the bus shelters in Sydney. As far as I know this is the second takeover that has come up on Instagram by the renowned st. artist. Its great to see even more characters using ad spaces to brighten our streets, even if it isn't sanctioned behavior.

OX - Collages Contextuels, Book Release

I cannot be happier to announce that OX has a brand new book chronicling some 30 years of his outdoor advertising billboard takeover work. I would wax on about OX's work in this post but instead I will just leave you with the forward I wrote for him that I think sums up my feelings about his process nicely.

Advertising has developed a sophisticated language in its long history of helping products and ideas gain prominence in our local, and subsequently global cultures. The pragmatic use of words and descriptions gave way to the abstract use of color and suggestion to carry out its goal of persuasion. This fact is probably nothing new to the 21st century citizen as we inhale deeply the messages of corporate pioneers. What effects these persuasions might have on our societies is a hotly debated topic and one better left to the scholars of our times, the social scientists and the cultural anthropologists who are tasked with understanding how commercial media affects our behavior. 

Any citizen of a modern metropolis can attest to the rapid proliferation of outdoor advertising media on our streets, the billboard literally above all others in the hierarchy of outdoor commercial media venues. It is from this lofty perch that commercial media enters our consciousness and proceeds to act on our minds. While the goal of advertising campaigns in general, and of each individual campaign for that matter, might be various, each shares the need for your attention. All advertisement is first an appeal for your focus, a distraction from your current state of mind. To what ends this distraction is aimed can be debated, but that it exists, cannot. 

For many years OX has elegantly revealed this distraction by repurposing billboards for his own use. With incredible site specificity and consideration of the environment, OX’s judicious use of design focuses our attention not on the billboard itself, but back onto the environment in which it exists, drawing careful relationships between architecture, color, and space. In doing so, the billboard ceases to be a venue from which commercial media removes us from our environment by focusing our attention elsewhere. What once distracted us from the world around us is an opportunity for OX to bring us closer to one another by bringing our attention back to the present.

Ox gives his work to the public selflessly, support his work by purchasing the book [HERE]

Hacking the Outdoor Digital Billboard

Ill be releasing some physical help for ad liberation soon but until then try your hand at simply hacking in. Amazing!

OX forced out of Paris for blue sky billboard hijacking

VIA Underground Paris

French artist, OX’s, latest ad takeover at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, is a site – and weather – specific artwork that was planned for this out-of-town location due to OX’s fondness for displaying his artworks backed by barren suburban landscapes, as well as the changing nature of the Parisian billboard space, which makes it ever harder to find suitable billboards to hijack. More [Here]

Propaganda volta às ruas de São Paulo com anúncio de cerveja

Sao Paulo has been ad free for several years now after the swift actions of its mayor brought a reckless situation under control. While I have not visited Sao Paulo, images suggested that everything from the largest billboards to the smallest postings came down quickly after the implementation of Lei Cidade Limpa. According to sources in Sao Paulo this just changed with the implementation of bus shelter advertising and freestanding ads affixed to city clocks. I am unsure of the politics of this new action which seems to go against the very notion of the "clean city law" but what is clear is that the spirit of the law has been broken with this new development. No longer is the city controlled by an overwhelming proliferation of commercial messages but in its place we have an institutionalized use of public space for commercial messaging. While it may not appear as blighting as the disarray that stood years before, the effects of widespread commercial imagery on the society as a whole is nonetheless the same. I look forward to seeing what the community response to this overnight betrayal of the "clean city law" which was so popular amongst Paolistas.

VIA: Folha De S. Paulo

Seis anos e três meses após o início da vigência da Lei Cidade Limpa, coube a uma marca de cerveja abrir caminho para a volta da publicidade nas ruas de São Paulo. [Mais Aqui]

Legal Wars: L.A.’s Mobile Billboard Ban Upheld By Court

VIA: Ban Billboard Blight

The city’s ban on billboards mounted to trailers and parked on city streets was upheld this week by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. A San Fernando Valley company responsible for many of the billboards had sued the city shortly after the 2011 enactment of the ban, claiming that it violated the company’s First Amendment rights. More [HERE]

Teeth in the Easter Spirit

Here is a little doozy sent over to me by Teeth. enjoy!