Subvertisers for London

Our good friends at Dog Section Press just released a short documentary on the radical subvertising that has been happening in London for the past few years. It is a fantastic look at some of the politics and actions of a unique group of activists trying to change the conversation on how we co-curate our shared public spaces. Give it a watch and let us know what you think. 

Watch Film [HERE]

On Crowded London Streets, Councils Fight a Flood of Phone Boxes

VIA: NY Times

LONDON — The British telephone box is not dead yet. In parts of central London, a box stands sentinel every 100 feet — and if phone companies got their way, they’d plant one every 50 feet.

More [HERE]

Anarchists Poetry Greet Commuters in London

Special Patrol Group started the year off with some illicit anarchist poetry. In 2018 let us all remember that we are many, and they are few. More often than not your troubles are my troubles and mine yours. Solidarity with your fellow man and woman is the only way to build a collective will that could demand equality for all. 

Anarchists greet commuters in London with subversive anti-capitalist poetry on the first day back to work for many.

"Anarchist poetry" was illicitly installed into advertising spaces on the London Underground this morning. The designs mimicked Transport for London's official Poetry on the Underground campaign, in what is thought to be an act of "Subvertising". The poems both have an anti-capitalist theme, and their installation was timed to coincide with what is the first day back to work for many Londoners.

The ad-hack has been claimed by Special Patrol Group, who said:

"We wanted to invite our fellow workers to think about the nature of work under capitalism - especially after we've all just had a few days off. If you don't like it, perhaps 2018 can be the year we act together to replace useless toil with useful work and be done with Bullshit Jobs forever. A three-day week sounds nice, doesn't it?"

The Masque of Anarchy, written in 1832 by English Romantic poet Percy Shelley, has been updated to give it a feminist twist. After a year that saw scandals around the gender pay gap and sexual harassment, Special Patrol Group say they changed the poem to read "Women of England" (where it had previously been addressed to the men of England) to highlight the fact that "women are particularly oppressed by the workplace".

They further explained:

"From shitty pay to sexual harassment, women have the worst of it in the workplace. We hope that will change in 2018." 

The self-described "shadowy subvertising organisation" claimed that hundreds of the posters have been installed on the Underground by a network of autonomous volunteers. The group carried out a similar intervention on the first day back to work in January 2015:

https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/yvq9qg/david-graeber-pointless-jobs-tube-poster-interview-912

Best,

SPG x.

Piccadilly Circus billboard uses recognition technology to deliver targeted adverts

We already knew this was happening but a reminder is always a good idea.

VIA: Dezeen

A new digital billboard in London's Piccadilly Circus uses recognition technology to display targeted advertisements based on the make of passing cars, and the gender and age of pedestrians. More [HERE]

How advertising shits in your head

Wonderful little article on a new publication that I am super proud to be a part of called "Advertising Shits in Your Head" get a copy [HERE] It is only 4$

VIA: Huck magazine

Vyvian Raoul brings us three exclusive interviews with the subvertising artists featured in a new book on the contemporary subvertising movement, Advertising Shits In Your Head. More [HERE]

London’s new high-tech phone boxes don’t work very well

VIA: Arstechnica.ukhttps://arstechnica.co.uk

London's new phone boxes are experiencing some technical issues. According to some reports, about 100 of the new kiosks—which were built by Alan Sugar's company Amscreen—have been installed, but they are buggy, hard to use, and in some cases can't connect to the Internet. More [HERE]

A Photographic Tour of London’s Art-Filled Streets

My good friend Luna Park has a new book out called (Un)sanctioned: The Art on New York Streets and it is a fantastic look at the vibrant city I love. Her recent trip to London shows she treats every city with the same deference and I was happy to have been up in London while she was around. 

VIA: Hyperallergic

Last July, I spent two weeks in London documenting its street art and graffiti scene, my first return visit since 2009. I’d been warned by a number of people that I wouldn’t recognize the city. Yet the plethora of construction cranes and hoardings on the one hand, and shiny, new, glass towers on the other, were views I found very familiar. Much like New York, my home of the past 19 years, London is being aggressively redeveloped. The plummeting availability of affordable housing and systemic loss of studio space were frequent topics of conversation, anxieties only compounded by the uncertainty left in the wake of the Brexit vote. More [Here]

NOTES ON FLYPOSTING AND POROUS URBAN SPACE

The last time I was in London I was posting some small works on the street over some pretty nice Fly Posting locations. Halfway through I noticed an older gentleman taking notice and then filming me after he asked if "I was supposed to be doing, what I was doing." I finished my work while he called the cops. I took a few final photographs and then before packing up decided to engage him as he was still idling around the area. This interaction turned out to be one of the more bizarre and interesting street moments I have had yet. Turns out the person I was talking to was at one time a Fly Poster himself, operating illegally to cover the streets in commercial posters, and also a professor who had thought plenty about the streets of his city and what kinds of policy, be it formal or informal, makes for a vibrant and engaging public environment.

We exchanged information and the man who would have had me arrested has become a bit of a friend as we email back and forth and try to get to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter to me is that today this man operates Flying Leaps, a company that makes "art" posters which are illegally placed on the street next to illegal advertising and which can be bought online. To me they are simple advertising that hides behind a more altruistic vision, but advertising nonetheless. To him they are an attempt to use public space in the participatory manner that all Fly Posters agree to, and which street artists and graffiti artists prescribe.

Take a look at his essay on the topic below as it is well worth the read and makes an interesting point that is often overlooked and that I did not expect to be made by an advertiser them self. The streets are becoming less and less accessible, even to the advertisers that once used them, as multinationals control more of our lives, including what we see on our way to work.

VIA: Flying Leaps

In this age of immateriality, as mobile phone apps and e-mail blasts add new marketing potentials undreamed of in the […] [19th century], it may seem curious to look at posters as a distinct form. But posters’ format provides a snapshot of broader epochal transition. To be sure, posters are no longer the darlings of most modern advertisers, but they have hardly died away. Indeed, how and when they are deployed becomes all the more interesting. When Apple iPod was launched, the company chose a poster campaign, presenting silhouettes of listeners dancing against backgrounds of screaming, saturated colour, to convey the physicality and sensory depth of the iPod experience. Even – perhaps especially – in a digital age, the materiality and life of a poster can maintain a powerful hold on us.

More [HERE]

Mobstr Knows What Is And What Isn't Acceptable

Simple, effective and always on point. As funny as this piece is for a chuckle and a nod, this is pretty serious on a fundamental level. When we privilege one type of communication over another we are making a collective decision about our priorities and ultimately our desires for our future selves. As of right now, we got it all fucked up and Mobstr knows it.

All the ads in this London subway station are gone ... and replaced with cats

When you pay the advertising company to replace ads with art or other public messaging you are reinforcing the belief that public space should be bought and sold to the highest bidder. I love this idea but I hate that it doesn't demand more.

VIA: CNN

If your dog travels with you, it might be better to avoid Clapham Common Tube station for the next couple of weeks. More [HERE]

New Mobstr

Fresh new work from Mobstr

Thomas Dekeyser on Robert Montgomery

Thomas Dekeyser wrote a nice blog post on Robert Montgomery's work that I think does a good job of navigating his desire for subvertising work to always be illegal in order to retain the most powerful critique of capitalism and the systems that help to perpetuate it. Montgomery's work isnt always illegal and yet it is incredibly powerful so parsing these two thing out isn't easy when you want to see the world in black and white. Well worth a read as Dekeyser is becoming one of my favorite thinkers on this topic.

Last week I went to hear Robert Montgomery speak at The Art Conference. I’ve been reaching out to him for a while now, trying to arrange a conversation, without luck, so I was excited to finally hear one of my favourite subvertising practitioners elaborate on his practice and related politics. More [HERE]

The Art Conference #01

I just got back from London where Tina Ziegler held the first TAC (The Art Conference) in a beautiful old factory venue called the Ugly Duck. I was asked to open two days of pretty intense talks about Art, Technology, and social engagement. I took the task seriously and used my work to show how advertising, as one of the sub genre's of cultural production systems, undermines social progress by monopolizing the systems of dissemination, prohibiting access and participation, economically driving technological determinism, and framing our cultural values in frighteningly self serving ways. It all went pretty well despite not having a podium to put my papers on. Given the chance to do it again I plan to do a little more memorization, and to attempt to go beyond advertising to Art itself, which has its own way of slowing social progress in ways which are similar to advertising itself. 

Notable speakers from the conference were RJ Rushmore who's talk From Dissidence to Decorative derided projects like Urban Nation as decorative city wallpaper intent on raising property value more than providing any of the real radical politics once prescribed to street art. As a nice opposition to that, Teresa Latuszewska spoke about the Urban Forms mural project in Lodz Poland which is a sanctioned mural project but one that works hard to reach out to the community and integrate itself deep into the skin of the city. They have also done some pretty boring and thankless work gathering hard statistics on peoples feelings towards the individual murals and the culture in general. Mia Grundahl spoke about Women on Walls which I knew little about and which practically brought me to tears. To say that these projects proved RJ's point would be an understatement. 

Similarly heartbreaking and inspirational was the work of Robert Montgomery whose texts can often be found on the street where advertising once broadcast its messages loudly. Robert has taken over billboards illegally, but he has also worked directly with the OOH companies to place his work. At first I was upset that he would collaborate with the enemy, but after speaking with him and hearing him talk, I realized that my radical politics was less important to him than ensuring there was an alternative voice to the aggressive commercial megaphone we are often confronted with on a daily basis. His writing, a sort of haunting conversation with the city and capitalism, draws a beautiful contrast that works to undermine consumerist propaganda. While I surely like his illegal pieces better, I cannot say that the sanctioned pieces are less effective to someone who doesn't know the politics behind anti ad activity. And finally Dan Witz took me on a nostalgic trip back to his earliest work that began in 1978 a year before I was born. That guy has been doing groundbreaking street art before the term was coined, hell even before graf made its mark. A true pioneer. 

All in all it was a fantastic event and I look forward to the next. If you have an opportunity to visit one yourself, I highly suggest taking the time. 

A quick installation on Commercial street, London

 The incredible force behind TAC01 Tina Ziegler

 The crowd at the first TAC

 Talking to Dan Witz about staying the course and privilege

Robert Montgomery

Speaking about how advertising undermines social progress

Speaking about how advertising undermines social progress

Anti-Advertising History? That's Historic!

While I definitely think there are some additions to this Anti-Advertising history, I was super happy to be included in the timeline. The fact of the mater is that despite the growth of advertising alongside the rise of global capitalism, there is a strong resistance being mounted from artists and academics alike that see it as an important battleground for addressing the rampant pillaging of our planet and the de-evolution of our critical public discourse.

Cultural Hijack Website

If you don't already know about the website Cultural Hijack, it's well worth taking a look at some of the projects and artists they highlight. Some ad takeover work, but also an assortment of other relevant projects.

The Art Conference Speaker

I am pleased to announce my participation in The Art Conference coming up in late July at the Ugly Duck in London. Billed as the first of many, TAC#01 is focused on the evolution of Street Art. I will be speaking about my practice, the role of advertising on our collective psyche, and how we might use art to further our visions of utopia beyond the gallery walls. In addition to the talk I will be giving, I am also going to exhibit a few images from the Collisions series along with some of the PublicAccess keys and video.

I am excited to be a part of the event as there are a handful of incredible artists and thinkers I have worked with in the past, as well as others that I look forward to meeting at the event. If you are in London July 23rd and 24th, make sure to get yourself a ticket and join us for what will be an interesting two days of thoughtful discussion. Find out more and register [Here]

T̶V̶Sly TV by Dr. D and Disobedient Films

Head over to Vandalog for the full story and a nice little video

VIA: Vandalog

Dr. D‘s latest project, a collaboration with Disobedient Films, takes his ad busting beyond billboards. Sly TV, a parody of the British satellite TV company Sky (a part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire), is perhaps most visible as a series of wheatpastes in East London. More [HERE]

A company is crowdfunding to replace all the adverts in a tube station with photos of cats

I've said it once and I will say it again, paying outdoor advertising companies to replace commercial messages with a more publicly oriented imagery is a horrendous idea. The money raised to alleviate commuters for a moment in time is much better spent advocating for the removal of commercial media from not only our public spaces, but our public media systems in general. Would you crowd fund to pay a coal fired plant to stop belching smoke into your backyard for a few hours only knowing that they would continue to do so after your funds ran out, using the money you had given them to advocate for thier own continued existence? 

VIA: Mashable

LONDON — Imagine a world in which you didn't have to go on the Internet to see pictures of cats — they were right there in front of your face on your daily commute. More [HERE]

New PublicAdCampaign Street/Gallery Work - Collisions 2015

In 2015 I installed three simple black and white designs over three consecutive advertising panels in order to create a stark contrast with the environment that would arrest viewers and allow them to see that an intervention had taken place. I have since then continued to make interventions using this same design motif, calling it the Collisions series. Here are a few images from that series thus far. 

I have also been experimenting with Augmented Reality and my gallery work so if you are feeling ambitious, download the PublicAdCampaign app (700mb) for iOS [HERE] and Android [HERE] Once you launch the app, point it at any of the images below and enjoy some extra content buried in the digital world. 

NYC, 2015

Berlin, 2015

Paris, 2015

Paris, 2015

Barcelona, 2015

Brussels, 2015

Brussels, 2015

London, 2015

London, 2015

London, 2015

London, 2015

Paris, 2015

Collaboration with OX, Paris 2015

Hackpacks and the right to the city: some thoughts

Some really interesting thoughts coming out of the UK on ad takeover work and its role in imagining new social realities not just on the street but in the larger cultural context. 

VIA: Distorted Space

It costs an advertiser a few £10k’s to access bus shelter advertising spaces, it costs you £6. After their involvement with Banksy’s Dismaland exhibition, Strike Magazine! have been working to ensure public access to a third of the global outdoor media landscape; offering inhabitants the tools to claim their right to at least a part of the city. Their hack pack comes with a handy how-to guide. More [HERE]