Ad Disruptions by Nuria Mora

Nuria is one of the MaSAT organizers and a force to be reckoned with. Vandalog has some new ad disruptions posted today.

Via Vandalog

Adbusters Includes TrustoCorp's Masat Addition

Recently, Trustocorp's addition to the MaSAT project was printed in Adbusters Magazine. While I was a bit disappointed they included the project under the meme's page, essentially reducing the entire event to the "slogan" Trustocorp submitted, I was happy to see the article on the following page. A Unified Thoery of Mental Pollution by Micah White, opens with this paragraph…

"How do we fight back against the incessant flow of logos, brands, slogans and jingles that submerge our streets, invade our homes and flicker on our screens? We could wage a counteroffensive at the level of content: attacking individual advertisements when they cross the decency line and become deceptive, violent or overly sexual. But this approach is like using napkins to clean up an oil spill. It fails to confront the true danger of advertising - which is not in its individual messages but in the damage done to our mental ecology by the sheer volume of its flood."

While the article goes on to champion the writing of Michel Serres and the mental environmentalist movement, essentially it proposes a merger between our concept of mental and physical toxins in our shared environments. In this way we should be as concerned about Carcinogens and cellphone radiation as we should the proliferation of media into the smallest recesses of our lives. Wow. While this ecological approach seems more fitting for our pastoral notions of the good life, I am an urban dweller through and through. In the city, it is not the vistas that need to be protected but our psyche. The difference I want to note is that while in a suburban environment we might want to keep the landscape "clean" and intrusion free, in an urban environment I believe we must find a way to omit advertising and replace it with a more public, but no less intense form of media. The benefits I find to being surrounded by people and the manifestation of their personal thoughts on the walls of our city is profound and I in no way wish for the removal of this type of communication.

This notions seems to agree with Michel Serres interpretation of a mental environmentalist movement but without having fully read his work I cannot say at this point if I am correct.

VIA Adbusters

"Michel Serres, an eccentric French philosopher, has written the first truly philosophical work of the mental environmentalist movement, a radical re-conception of pollution that hones the Adbusters critique. The big idea of his book, Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution?, is that animals, humans included, use pollution to mark, claim, and appropriate territory through defiling it and that over time this appropriative act has evolved away from primitive pollution, urine and feces, to "hard pollution", industrial chemicals, and "soft pollution", the many forms of advertising. [More Here]

Credit Where Credit is Due

Photo Credit: Jaime Alekos

Photo Credit: Falansh

In my rush back from Madrid and the quick transition back to a hectic schedule in New York, it seems I made a terrible oversight. Jaime Alekos and Falansh are two amazing photographers that helped document the MASAT project as well as participate by giving text. Their photos are the only installation photos we have and their imagery is undoubtedly a huge part of the project. While I credited their work in my posts to this blog, I forgot to credit their work on the MaSAT website. These images were then picked up by other sites and distributed without credit. I sincerely apologize to both of them and ask that anyone using imagery off the MaSAT site give credit when the photos are attributed.

Sean Martindale - Simultaneous Advertising Takeovers in Madrid and Toronto

Sean Martindale, artist and ToSAT organizer contributed his sentiments to the MaSAT project in two cities. Using the text format, Sean decided on "We interrupt this program". This text was translated into Spanish and we installed it for him in Madrid on 03-30-11. On the same day, halfway around the world, Sean installed the English translation in Toronto. Thanks for taking it there Sean.

Cemusa Removing MaSAT Posters

Photos by Falansh
These photos are the only documentation of Cemusa removing MaSAT work. In fact, according to the photographer, this employee didn't even remove our work at this point, but rather "felt" the poster (presumably to check it's authenticity) and then closed the bus shelter back up. Later we noticed Cemusa crews counting the number of posters that we had put up. They then returned a few hours later with enough ads to remove our work without leaving the shelters empty. I find it interesting that they don't want the shelters empty and would rather allow our content a few more hours of public time. It's as if they think the paused operation of the shelters might trigger a moment of truth where the viewer questions the validity of the advertising venue itself. Remarkably this is half of what I am trying to achieve with these projects and maybe simply removing hundreds of ads would have a similar effect.

Con la guerrilla gráfica que 'robó' 130 marquesinas de Madrid

VIA El Mundo

Son las seis y media de la mañana y llevo quince minutos frente a la antigua estación del Norte, acompañado de una joven y un francés ansiosos por hacer desaparecer los anuncios de Mahou, Hugo Boss y Nokia que cuelgan de las marquesinas de en Madrid. [More Here]

Madrid Street Advertising Takeover Site is Live

The MaSAT website is finally live. The action took place on 03-30-11 and resulted in 106 bus shelter advertising replacements with 106 text based public sentiments intent on creating public dialogues where once commercial messages stood firm. Although there were no arrests this time around, Cemusa was quick to remove our handiwork, replacing our imagery within 5 hours of its posting. I want to thank everyone who took the time to submit to this project as your words and thoughts are what made this project so powerful. The sheer range of sentiments was mind boggling and truly magnificent to behold.

MaSAT website: www.publicadcampaign.com/masat