A Guerrilla Campaign Is Replacing Ads with Art Around New York City

2017 is looking to be a great year already with the launch of AiAP (Art in Ad Places). RJ Rushmore and Caroline Caldwell have spearheaded an ambitious yearlong project that aims to make a sustained critique of outdoor advertising and its deleterious effects a part of our day to day conversations. I will wait till the project is further along to give my full analysis and critique, (reserved for the deserving and not meant to come off punitively) but suffice to say I am very excited about what they are doing and have high hopes for their unique approach to bringing this issue to the forefront of public consciousness. Having spoken to both of RJ and Caroline before this project began to take shape, I know there will be some heavy hitters joining the fray by participating in AiAP and I look forward to hearing the reasons they have lent thier work to such a potentially contentious issue. Until then, keep your eyes on the work of these two activist curators and expect the ad takeover movement in New York to see a renewed interest and vigor. 

VIA: Hyperallergic

Art in Ad Places will install a new work by a different artist in a payphone kiosk every week this year.
As flowers bloomed last spring, a billboard advertising $1,000 off a Brazilian butt lift popped up outside artist Caroline Caldwell’s Brooklyn apartment. It pictured a giant, airbrushed ass in a skimpy bikini against a beach background — an image Caldwell had to look at every day. “I laughed it off at first, but the billboard was designed to make me feel self-conscious, and I got tired of it,” Caldwell told Hyperallergic. “I became determined to fill my life with art that would make people feel anything else.” More [HERE]

Billboards bridging two realities

VIA: Vandalog

Over 2.3 million people are currently held in American prisons, jails, and detention facilities. Many of them will be there for years, even for life. In most states, even juveniles can be put in solitary confinement, and visitation is becoming more difficult and expensive. It’s another world, largely cut off from the rest of us. A recent series from Know Hope aims to take one small step at bridging that gap. More [HERE]

Philadelphia kicks of spring with new ad busts

RJ over at Vandalog facilitated getting a dozen or so Philadelphia PublicAccess keys into the hands of local artists a few months back. The result? lots of art on the streets and of surprisingly good quality for that matter. Normally, artists don't take a huge amount of time crafting thier ad-takeover pieces, knowing full well that they will be removed, and likely trashed days if not hours after being installed. In many ways, ad-takeovers are the ultimate in ephemerality and the photo documentation serves as the protest as much, if not more than, the actual installation. As RJ has mentioned in the past, the internet has been incredibly important for the ad-takeover movement. Here are two great pieces by Joe Boruchow and NDAxHellbent. There's been a lot more work than this but you will just have to go searching the web yourself to find it.

VIA: Vandalog

NDA and Hellbent

Joe Boruchow

More [HERE]

Animated GIFs meet augmented reality and street art

I could not be more excited about the launch of the most recent NO AD curatorial project. RJ Rushmore has gathered 13 Gif artists to present the most exciting use of the NO AD technology yet. Each advertisement in the subway this month will trigger the moving image and with that, usher in an expectation that NO AD will continue to reach beyond the static 2D image and present its users with high quality content that takes advantage of this digital format. Visit the site now and get started. www.noad-app.com

A screenshot from Bob-omb, featuring stills of GIF art by James Kerr (Scorpion Dagger) and Dave Whyte.

This month Re+Public is excited to release an all-GIF art update to the NO AD app, in collaboration with RJ Rushmore of Vandalog. NO AD is a free mobile app that uses Augmented Reality technology to resurface New York subway advertisements with art, creating an alternative digital exhibition space. Viewers can discover works of art throughout the city’s subway system. The more stations you visit, the more art you experience. With this update, every piece in the exhibition will be animated, and NO AD will be highlighting GIF art for the first time.

This week, the NO AD app updates to feature Bob-omb, an exhibition of animated GIFs curated by RJ Rushmore. Bob-omb includes 39 of GIFs by 13 individuals and collectives, weaponizing GIF art as a tool for reimaging public space. The artists range from filmmakers to illustrators to journalists, and the variety and depth of their artwork should surprise any viewers who may think that GIFs are primarily for memes and Buzzfeed articles. With this exhibition, NO AD users will be able to take static subway advertisements and transform them into dynamic artworks on their smartphones.

Artists featured in Bob-omb include by The Barkers, Caitlin Burns, Dave Whyte, Hrag Vartanian, James Kerr – Scorpion Dagger, Jeremyville, Maori Sakai, Molly Soda, Paolo Čerić aka Patakk, Ryan Seslow, The Current Sea, YoMeryl, and Zack Dougherty.

Bob-omb continues NO AD’s history of collaborating with curators to bring new and surprising art to public spaces through Augmented Reality technology. Previous exhibitions in NO AD have included collaborations with the International Center of Photography and Subway Art Blog amongst others. Future updates to the app will highlight additional collaborations with institutions and curators across disciplines. NO AD’s mission is to create an alternative exhibition space for New Yorkers, bringing them closer to the rich cultural content the city has to offer.

Desire Obtain Cherish billboard takeover

VIA Vandalog

This billboard takeover in Hollywood is nearly perfect. Effective as a billboard takeover for the anti-consumerism, the use of a perfect “Big Brothter-y” image and for completely removing the original text on the billboard. Plus, and here’s the kicker, the artists call themselves Desire Obtain Cherish, so, if you’re in on it, it’s a bit of an ad for them too, but if you’re not (and I’m guess most people are not), it’s just a takeover.

This interview with John Fekner by Monica Campana is well worth the read. Enjoy

In the 70′s, only a few artists were using the streets as way to reach out to people, communicate and ultimately make art. Accompanied by Don Leicht, his long time collaborator, John Fekner brought art and help to areas in New York that were in need at the time. “Decay/Abandoned” , “Wheels Over Indian Trails”,”Post no bills, Post no dreams”, etc were only some of the hundreds of messages John spray painted all over New York. What some might have called vandalism, some others saw as a welcoming statement, and some others saw as a sign that things needed to get fixed in the city. [More Here]

Katsu and Destroy/Rebuild ad takeovers

I'm not going to comment on this until the gallery exhibition is over, except to say I like it.

Via Vandalog

Katsu and Avone aka Destroy & Rebuild have a show on now at PowerHouse Arena in Brooklyn. To promote the show, they took over a number of phone booth advertisements in NYC. In the past, I’ve been known to criticize street artists for putting of posters promoting gallery shows when they could be doing street art...[More Here]

Parallel: The Bus Shelters of Dennis Adams

Here at PublicAdCampaign we go after outdoor advertising because it is one of the main obstacles standing in the way of a more democratic and open public media landscape. Potentially, an open media landscape leads to higher levels of public interaction and investment and therefore a more active and engaged population. While the argument for our actions here at PAC can become much more nuanced, this reduction is a simple way to look at why we make work in public. While we may focus heavily on street art and graffiti, there is a large amount of public work which we neglect. It seems that Gaia, over at Vandalog, is starting a series of posts on public works which might escape the critical eye of those immersed in the world of street art and graffiti. Vandalog is a wonderful resource for contemporary urban art issues and I highly suggest visiting the site often. I wanted to repost this first post in a series GAIA calls Parallel in hopes that our readers will catch the upcoming posts on the topic which are sure to be of interest.

Once and a while I am going to post art works, whether they be installations, video, or other ephemera, that exist in the public realm and have existed parallel to contemporary street art but have been categorized into other art movements. Since the dawn of modernity and urbanization, there has been a rich history of artists using the city as their medium and subject, from impressionism to fluxus. Yet interestingly, these street practices that have existed before contemporary Street Art do not have much of a presence on the internet and the dissemination of these works are still limited to access to institutions and exhibits. [More Here]

Who Is Responsible For This Masterpiece?

VIA Vandalog

Gaia over at Vandalog just posted this image. It is fantastic as far as I'm concerned. Fittingly enough Gaia has asked for my assistance in figuring out the artist and I must say it is definitely before my time. That corner, Houston and Broadway, hasnt had a newsstand or small billboards on it since I can remember. Does anyone have any idea who might be responsible for this fantastic work? Some bizarre Daniel Buren one off where he decided for a moment to give up the stripes for text in response to Jenny Holzer?

Exit Through The Gift Shop Sniping Hit-Removed

2nd Avenue & 6th St. 04-13-10

RJ of Vandalog just posted his two cents regarding Jake Dobkin's recent photo of Banksy's street advertising for his new movie Exit Through The Gift Shop. (Which I saw and thoroughly enjoyed)

Banksy once said “‘Every time one of my friends borrows my ideas, mounts a huge art show and becomes a millionaire celebrity,’ a little bit of me wants him dead.” I’ll amend that to “Every time a street artist turns their back on their values, mounts a huge flyposting campaign and becomes what is essentially an advertising executive, a little bit of me wants to write over their work.”

Because RJ is far away in London and because we have just won the fight against NPA and thier illegal wildposting operations, I thought I'd take the opportunity to critique Banksy's commercial endeavor on our streets. I have been so busy I had to go over to this spot at 2 in the afternoon. I would have gone larger but this criticism was done at 2nd avenue and 6th street which is only a block away from the 9th precinct where all those arrested during the NYSAT projects were processed. I thought it better to make my point and move on.

2nd Avenue & 6th St. 04-13-10 (Banksy Adverts)

2nd Avenue & 6th St. 04-13-10

Guest Post For Vandalog

RJ of Vandalog asked me to weigh in on a recent Banksy piece in Notting Hill that treads a thin line between advertising and art. We have mixed feelings about Banksy, and thought the whole thing had more to do with how we use our public space than the infamous street artist.

You can read my full response [HERE]