This blog is a resource for ad takeover artists and information about contemporary advertising issues in public space. If you have content you would like to share, please send us an email.
Eduardo Moises Penalver & Sonia Kaytal Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership
Barbara Ehrenreich Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy
Lewis Hyde The Gift, Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World
Geoffrey Miller Spent: Sex, Evolution, & Consumer Behavior
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Advertising Shits In Your Head, US Edition.
Our good friends at PM Press have put together an American version of thier best selling "Advertising Shits In Your Head" UK publication. With Interviews, tutorials and insightful knowledge about advertising and its pernicious influence, ASIYH is a fantastic read and a great present for young minds and public space activists. If you can help support the Kickstarter campaign please do what you can to insure this publication makes it to press.
Advertising Shits in Your Head calls ads what they are—a powerful means of control through manipulation—and highlights how people across the world are fighting back. It diagnoses the problem and offers practical tips for a DIY remedy. Faced with an ad-saturated world, activists are fighting back, equipped with stencils, printers, high-visibility vests, and utility tools. Their aim is to subvert the ads that control us. More [HERE]
One of my ongoing personal projects these past few years has been the Collisions series. These photos document simple graphic BW patterns illegally installed into outdoor advertising around the world. On the street, the patterns are intended to grab a viewers attention with an image that has little reference to advertising and is hard to interpret as anything other than an interruption. I am interested in viewers thinking about the act of disobedience, the space around the advertisement, the frame that holds it. I want to create a small amount of room for radical imaginaries to blossom and allow utopian visions to tumble out of simple disruptions of reality.
"In elaborating and image of the future, utopian thought also generates a viewpoint from which the present becomes open to critique."
I choose the Collisions locations very carefully to create strong, well balanced photographs of the city. I want viewers of the photographs to be able to come back to the imagery over and over again. I want them to be meditative and an opportunity for believers to renew thier belief.
For those that only see the documentation, the images can be anemic. Proof of the politics that took place on the street isnt immediately recognizable. But hidden within the image itself is a digital video of the street installation viewable through an augmented reality mobile app. In this way the photographs take thier creative politics with them wherever they go, and for me remain charged objects.
Last year I decided to take the first 15 images from the Collisions series and put them in a small Zine/Booklet. It is a beautiful little signed edition of 400. Three essays by Jeff Ferrell, Thomas Dekeyser, and Carlo McCormick give the imagery unique context and insight. Thier thoughts give credence to the idea that our role as individuals is to push on the margins and expand our collective understanding of the world around us.
My first solo exhibition with Harlan Levey Projects was titled Civilian, and ran from November 16th to December 27th, 2017. A confluence of events afforded me some extra installation time which I used to prototype a sculptural piece that had been in the back of my mind. I think it really helped the installation and I look forward to creating more sculptural works in the future.
The front room consisted of 3, floor to ceiling, wheatpasted Collisions images. Each of these images augmented which brought you into the public where so much of my work takes place or originates. Below you were 22 bus shelter advertisements taken from the streets of Brussels over the course of a week. The advertisement was for Prima Donna, a women's lingerie company.
In the next room were 4 Labor pieces, 1 large Titan Smash piece, and the aforementioned sculpture which I titled 115 Fluorescent Tubes. Each of these pieces required me to steal advertising infrastructure. The most subtle works were the Labor series which start with me taking the plexiglass that normally lies behind outdoor advertising and which diffuses the fluorescent lights into an even illumination. These pieces of plexiglass are meticulously cleaned and then sanded to take on the appearance of soft marble. I then also take selected advertisements and paint out all of the text leaving only the image or product behind. The sanded plexiglass sheets are then placed on top of the image, one after another, until the image is almost illegible, leaving only the faintest trace for you to decipher.
In contrast to that work was the Titan Smash work which is made by stealing the Titan signs which adorn most NYC phonebooths to label to company who owns the booth. These signs are then smashed, reassembled, and cased in resin so that the sharp edges of the signs protrude from the frames. With all five parts, the piece stood a little over 8' x 4'.
And last was the prototype work that I created on site by removing 115 fluorescent lights from over 40 outdoor advertising locations around Brussels. Over the course of 3 days I carefully walked circles out from the gallery and back along a different path collecting bulbs along the way. Placed on a small stand and middle column that held the ballasts and wiring, the lights were wrapped in black furniture bands and simply stood upright in the gallery. The inner 12 bulbs were illuminated so that the bundle glowed from within.
For me the back room, and in particular the 115 fluorescent light's sculpture excited me as an artist. Had I made the sculpture using purchased materials, it would have been a nice lamp, but having taken the lights without permission I had transformed them into objects that could warrant conversation and dialogue. It was like small alchemy and one of the first pieces that I think is truly whole.
Collisions Exhibition June 15th 6-9PM Openwalls Gallery
I am very happy to announce that I will be exhibiting the entire Collisions series on June 15th at Openwalls Gallery in Berlin. This ongoing series has been in the making for the past 2 years and includes 15 photographs, each with an augmented reality component. Along side the photographs there will be a small a small amount of ephemera and a beautifully conceived essay by Thomas Dekeyser. Please join us between 6-9pm for the opening reception.
I was excited when Charlie and Cody asked me to come on thier Two Beers podcast a few weeks back. They have interviewed some interesting people and with the two beers format, nothing gets taken too seriously. If you want to know about my work, this is a really good way to get introduced to my thinking. Charlie and Cody ask a lot of great questions and I manage to answer more than a few in ways I can live with.
New episode of Two Beers In out today. We talk to artist Jordan Seiler about the politics behind outdoor advertising. If you need a Trump break, this one is 99% Trump free! Listen [HERE]
I wrote the following Hyperallergic article about the recent Subvertisers International week of action. The text was inspired by Luna Park's amazing photos of the NYC portion of the international event. Luna is the only photographer I know going out of her way to point her camera at the subvertising/ad-takeover movement. I cannot thank her enough for her continued interest in the political nature of the work and our sincere attempts to bring this small but significant issue to the forefront of our collective consciousness. I think she, like many other public/street/graffiti artists, see the value in having a public space that feels rich with voices and is worth diving into headlong with your eyes wide open.
Since this article is short, it talks a big game while leaving a lot to be said another time. One day I will try to write a long form essay that delves deeper into the many issues surrounding this work, its history, intention, and efficacy. Until then please enjoy this attempt to quickly put some perspective in place.
Advertising Shits In Your Head (no author is given), is a pocket-sized book, but it’ll burn a hole in any pocket you put it in. It’s a powerful tirade against advertising and what it does to our minds, to our culture, to our planet. But not content to sit and fulminate about it, it is a book that’s about action, about actively reclaiming our mental environment. As Banksy puts it: More [HERE]
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$
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]
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.
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]
Join us at May Day on 176 Nicholas Ave in Brooklyn, on July 15th between 7pm and 9pm for a practical introduction to Advertising Takeover work. The event is free and you can easily register for the limited number of seats on Eventbrite [HERE] A friend will give a bit of history into the movement before I give a very brief introduction to the tools and my preferred method of working.
Subvertising is the practice of altering, removing, or reversing of commercial outdoor media spaces that has seen an emergence over the last few years. From huge projects with 600 advert takeovers to individual site-specific interventions, a range of collectives and individuals have successfully enrolled the practice into a tactical force for political movements and for critical artistic practices. This event starts by offering a brief historical and theoretical overview of the practice before sharing all the practical skills and knowledge required for undertaking your own advertising takeovers in New York. We’ll bring in posters and painting materials to create our own adverts during the workshop. Come and join us!
I am extremely excited to be a part of the 50th Warsaw International Poster Biennale coming up this June. A huge thanks to Vermibus for introducing me to David Crowley, the curator and mind behind this unique exhibition which looks like as if it will honor the posters role in political activism while investigating the new forms it has taken in an increasingly digital, and mediated environment.
Professor David Crowley, Head of Critical Writing in Art & Design, has a long-term research interest in the poster as both a design object and a means of communication. RCA Blog talked to David about his curation of the fiftieth Warsaw International Poster Biennale in June 2016, and the changing faces of poster design and dissemination in the digital twenty-first century. More [HERE]
The now ubiquitous Stavanger-based street art initiative Nuart, in partnership with Stavanger Aftenbladet, has recently branched out to include yet another platform for public art: a large-scale billboard located in the heart of Stavanger that presents a rotation of short-term installations by commissioned local and international artists. More [HERE]
Everyone Hates Public Ads. Meet the Man Who Is Trying to Take Them All Down.
Here is a nice little video about the PublicAccess project produced by Aymann Ismail for slate.com. It's short and succinct, and while there are so many aspects and arguments behind what and why I do what I do, I think it makes a clear statement.
It’s a little past 3 p.m. in Manhattan, and Jordan Seiler is getting ready for his next public-ad intervention. He uses a homemade key he forged earlier from scratch to access an ad display in a bus shelter. After rolling up the ad and tossing it, he installed a simple black-and-white pattern he designed in its place. 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.
Last Friday November 27th, the Brandalism project pulled off the largest single Ad Takeover action ever. Some 80 artists were asked to submit works which were then printed and installed by a team of activists, resulting in over 600 individual ad takeovers. This unprecedented event took place on Black Friday, and directly ahead of the COP21 Climate negotiations taking place in Paris. Artists were asked to make works which spoke about climate change as the action was not only about advertisings role in our public spaces, but also about using the private advertising infrastructure to speak truth to the powers gathering in Paris to decide the fate of our planet.
The recent Brandalism action works in two ways that I think are worth taking a second to discuss. First, while advertising remains an integral part of our social fabric, creating and reiterating our culture back at us in an endless loop of dissemination and reception, the role it plays in fueling the issues which underly our climate crisis have not been widely discussed. Conspicuous consumption and the relentless renewal of products and services offered by, and needed in order to sustain capitalisms endless growth models, is in no small way responsible for the current crises our planet faces as we inch closer and closer to overshooting the carbon budget which would keep our planet under the 2degree estimates climate scientist believe will avert catastrophic planetary warming. This means that we must address our insatiable need for more and more stuff if we are going to create a collective society whose demands for goods will align with how much we can actually produce. This doesn't mean that you can't have new things, the benefits of modern technology and manufacturing, or must live a stoic life of abstinence from the goods and services that our society produces. But it does mean that we must address how much we choose to consume individually and weigh heavily our needs for what capitalism has to offer. Advertising as a medium, aims to disrupt a nuanced and practical analysis of your individual needs. Its objective is to create desire regardless of the implications of that desire on our society at large and this is in fundamental conflict with the interest of our planet. By illegally removing advertising on the street and replacing it with messages that address our climate issues, the Brandalism project is fundamentally rejecting the role advertising plays in our society and re-imaginging a world in which its influence is kept in line with our collective needs. If we are going to tackle the major issues of our day, advertisings influence on our collective psyche must be mitigated so that we can more appropriately discuss what, and how much we will consume individually. A good start to this mitigation would be admitting that advertising plays a negative role in our society by fueling over consumption and reducing its impact is of the utmost importance.
The second aspect of the Brandalism project that I think is worth noting is that beyond questioning advertisings role in our society, the Brandalism project has re-imagined how our public infrastructure should be used and what types of conversations are appropriate for our public spaces. Most, if not all of the artworks/critical messages created by the participating artists, are social statements which do not have an institutionalized venue for communication in public space. Protests against how our society is moving forward are often relegated to marches, or individual commentary that take place outside of normal public behavior. Public space, by definition is the arena in which our collective goals and interests can be expressed to one another in a democratic and meaningful way. It is in this venue that our individual opinions, put together, create public opinion and we must foster this type of democratic discussion at every turn if we are to have our collective voices create a singular voice of our collective interests. To use our public spaces for advertising, and the interests of commerce is to deny public spaces role as our collective soap box and to privilege commercial speech over our individual interests. The Brandalism project, by using the public infrastructure that typically holds commercial media, for critical dialogue, re-purposes public space for its intended purpose. This is no small feat and by setting an example of a more properly function public space and civic infrastructure, the Brandalism project imagines a world in which we use our public spaces to address the most pressing issues of our time. While I don't believe that our public spaces must always be used to discuss such lofty goals, it surely doesn't hurt and a public space in which we can openly discuss larger societal issues is one in which we may also discuss some of the smaller issues which we deem to be important.
To say that the Brandalism project was a success would be an understatement, but like all critical dialogues created by civil disobedience projects, its call to arms must be met with continued support. Fundamentally changing advertisings role in our public spaces should be one of the priorities that social activists have on thier agenda. Not only does advertising negatively contribute to our consumption behavior but it actively creates commercial conversations in venues which should be used for public discussions of the problems of our current days. Our public spaces should provide us with vigorous opportunities for debate and public discussions, not opportunities for commercial hypnosis that prevents even the most critical thinkers from seeing the world as it is and taking action to change it for the better.
I sent this email out to Public Access key holders yesterday as NOAD Day is shortly upon us. Not all PublicAdCampaign readers have Public Access keys but its worth a mention on this site in case those same readers have resources of thier own and want to contribute to this global initiative.
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Friends and Public Access Key Holders,
It's that time of year again when we collectively take to the streets and remove advertising across the globe to express our collective discontent with the use of our public spaces for commercial messaging. Last year 62 participants took to the streets and more than 300 advertisements were removed, and we want to keep that momentum goring. We hope that you will join us in this second year, or join us again, if you participated in 2014.
The task is easy, go out on November 27th and remove at least one advertisement. Don't forget to take a photograph of the empty bus shelter, phone booth, billboard, or whatever type of advertisement you have chosen to liberate. Share this image with the rest of us by posting it to the Tumblr or Facebook, sending it directly to the NOAD Gmail, or sharing it on social media with the hashtag #NOADday. Feel free to share your experience, write about why you participated, or anything else you find relevant to the project.
**For those of you in the United States, NOAD Day is the day after Thanksgiving. Shake off that sense of gluttony with some good old fashioned civil disobedience, have fun with your relatives by engaging the city you love, or just take a damn shot of whatever is still lying around and get out there and join the fight. You can spend the rest of your lazy friday basking in the knowledge that you participated in a growing community of people who demand better cities for a better citizen.
WHAT IS NOAD Day?
NOAD Day is an ongoing civil disobedience project begun in 2014 as an expression of global resistance to the use of our shared public spaces for advertising and commercial media. The goal of the project is to create a global voice of dissatisfaction against the use of our public spaces for a commercial media that is a detriment to our collective psyche. The more participation we have, the greater our voice, so take a minute this November 27th to join the party.
¿Se han fijado en las marquesinas de la ronda Universitat? Jordan Seiler is in the city. En Barcelona. El artista y activista de Nueva York es uno de los invitados del festival Openwalls y esta madrugada ha dejado rastro en el centro de la ciudad para denunciar el bombardeo de publicidad, mensajes de privados, subraya, que los ciudadanos recibimos en el espacio público. More [HERE]
I couldnt be more excited to announce that NO AD, the NYC based mobile digital exhibition space that takes advantage of the vast subway advertising infrastructure of the New York subway system, now works in Berlin. Users can download a separate NO AD Berlin app on iOS [HERE] and Android [HERE] which uses the vast billboard advertising infrastructure that adorns Berlin streets and metro stations.
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The NO AD mobile digital exhibition space began in New York City as a way to propose new strategies for art consumption as well as challenge the use of our public space for commercial messaging. NO AD works by using your mobile device and augmented reality technology to recognize outdoor advertising and overlay digital artwork in place of the advertisement on your phone or tablet. In NYC, the NO AD exhibition space took advantage of the vast number of subway advertisements in the NY transit system, turning every subway station into a mobile gallery. In Berlin, the NO AD exhibition space uses the the vast network of outdoor, and subway billboards found throughout the city. In order to reveal the exhibition, simply start NO AD and while standing directly in front of any billboard in Berlin, point your device at the advertisement.
NO AD Berlin is presented by PublicAdCampaign and Open Walls Gallery for Berlin Art Week, 2015. The images and artworks included are taken from a collection of past NO AD NYC exhibitions that include street art, photography, painting, and animation works.
Exhibition Dates: Sept 14th - Oct 31st
A big thanks to Guillaume Trotin, Aida Gomez, Letitia Jacquot for their support in Berlin without which this exhibition would not have been possible.
The PublicAccess project continues to expand and offer access to more outdoor advertising infrastructure around the world. Recently we added three new keys allowing access to Miami, Berlin, Hangzhou, Bodoe, Philadelphia, and Mexico city.
To get involved or find out more about the project, visit the site [HERE] and take a look below.
A big part of the PublicAccess project is made possible by people around the world wanting to open bus shelters in thier own city. They contact us and then we work to figure out if we can help. Sometimes that means recognizing an old locking system that we already have access to, and other times that means making something new by working with an enthusiastic partner. In the end the process is always a collaborative effort that we enjoy, and often results in new markets being opened up for truly public communications.
Recently we gained access to Philadelphia and with new tools comes new thoughts and ideas on our streets. This PSA by NDA is an amazing example of the kind of lighthearted and yet generous ideas I think would populate a truly open public visual landscape free of advertising. I say good riddance to the disaster preparedness PSA's that demand we take personal responsibility for our fate in the next typhoon by hoarding tuna cans and batteries, and I say welcome to a constant reminder of my own tendency to preemptively sabotage my own desires... as offered by an actual human being! But seriously. If the placement of messages in our public space is to actually communicate ideas with each other, I think it should be noted that I have a tendency to contemplate the ideas of an individual over the bureaucracy, the local over the distant.
What people do with thier PublicAccess key is up to them. Sometimes a participant uses the key to promote thier own street wear brand, but more often than not, participants offer genuine outreach to others. This simple text installation on the streets of NY caught my eye, trying to enjoy each day, but finding myself failing to reach my goals and expectations, which always leaves me wanting more. Imperfectly calibrated happiness machines indeed...
We try hard to keep the PublicAccess project going so that the everyone can have access to our outdoor advertising infrastructure, and the predominant space for public visual communication.
The works presented below should also be viewed with a free augmented reality app, PublicAdCampaign Now! downloadable for Android [HERE].
I have been working on a new series of gallery pieces that focus on my long term struggle to take back outdoor advertising spaces without imposing my own aesthetics on the public or running an ad campaign for myself, while at the same time making visible my tactics in the hopes of promoting similar behavior in others. I do this to ask whether or not we should adorn our cities with commercial messages in light of the many other types of visual stimulus we could offer ourselves, and with the understanding that advertising in general has a net negative effect on our personal psychology and thus our global behavior as a species.
These works are as close as I think I have come to reaching that goal for a number of reasons. First, while people who are familiar with my work may look at these installations and assume it was me, I think thier utter simplicity anonymizes my actions and prevents the installation from being promotional. If you don't know who made the piece, you cant think about the person behind it and therefore must instead have a relationship to the image alone. That said, you must notice the installation in the first place and I think the striking difference between the imagery used for this series, and advertising, helps to create that initial interaction.
So now we have someone looking at an anonymous installation that removed an advertisement for some unknown reason. This is the space I want the viewer to end up, as it allows them to begin the conversation with themselves about the difference between the two types of imagery, advertisings ubiquity and role in our public spaces, and all of the other questions we should be asking ourselves when thinking about how we want our public visual environment to be used. Given the opportunity to disassociate these physical locations with thier expected advertising content, viewers are free to enter a line of thinking that is almost unheard of... "Should we have, and do we need, outdoor advertising intruding on our public spaces and minds?
While the initial performative aspect of these pieces works on the public viewer, these images are ultimately meant to hang in a gallery context, potentially loosing the credibility, and directness of the illegal physical takeover that is the proof of my ambitions. After all, these images are very clearly composites, a single moment created by compiling many hours of patient waiting into a single frame. If the images have gone through photoshop, what prevents the actual installation from being a fraud, and the proposed argument that the document depicts undeserving of our attention.
For this, the final element of AR, and the PublicAdCampaign Now! app come in to tell the rest of the story. Video of me actually installing the piece which is to become the image you are looking at in the gallery plays over the still image when viewed through the app, proving the aesthetics to be in service of the idea and the work to be sincere. Once this sincerity is established, I think the gallery viewer can come to a similar thought trajectory as the public viewer and honestly consider the proposed argument that is established by me actively breaking the law to remove commercial media and replace it with something else, whatever that might be.
