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
Monday, April 29, 2019
The War on Messaging: Advertising and the Fight for Your Attention
Very Excited to be on a panel with my colleagues and good friends RJ Rushmore and Katherine Lorimer, Moderated by Josh McPhee on May 2nd at 7pm. We will talk briefly about our individual projects and relationship to the ad takeover world and then open it up to Josh and the audience to delve deeper into the efficacy and motivations of ad takeover work. Please come out and support our work and the Moniker fair which has been kind enough to host us.
Factcheck: ‘Eén reclamebord verbruikt evenveel energie als drie huishoudens'
While it is poor form to have your facts easily misinterpreted or refuted, the fact that this article concentrates solely on debunking the specific amount of energy an advertisement uses and not on the underlying premise of the argument seems short sighted. We need to make smart choices about the way we use our collective resources be they energy or our attention. The fact that we use any resources on the promotion of commercial media in our shared public spaces should be the question at hand, not how much.
VIA: Bruzz
De posters van Act For Climate Justice moeten de aandacht trekken en dat is alvast gelukt. Niet alleen in Brussel, maar ook in Leuven, Gent, Oostende, Antwerpen, Namen en Luik werden ze in de nacht van 29 op 30 januari opgehangen op elektronische reclameborden. Naast de claim over het hoge energieverbruik wordt opgeroepen massaal de betrokken ministers rechtstreeks aan te spreken. Dat kan via de website wakeupyourministers.be. More [HERE]
I am excited to see Berlin Werbefrei organizing to make Berlin Ad free. It would be incredible to see such a large city make that kind of quality of life decision, in particular because the way advertising litters Berlin seems in some way to be possible because of how tolerance of is a part of the attitude of the city itself.
If you have ever been to Berlin you are familiar with the semi lawless attitude towards how the city is used that has created a thriving public culture. Outdoor beer gardens, heavy use of public parks for socializing, squats, street art, graffiti, bike culture, are all positive examples of a city that is tolerant with how it is described on a day to day basis. This has also led to a lot of advertising, wildposting and other street communications. These ads mix with a healthy dose of public communication that makes the city streets ripe with information and a place for cultural notification and ingestion.
While getting rid of the ads is a good, no great idea, it should be noted that the type of crackdown on advertising, particularly when it is done under the auspices of quality of life improvement and aesthetic concerns, can have far reaching effects that aren't always positive for a free wheeling town like Berlin. I hope Berlin Werbefrei is able to create a distinction between the advertising that litters the city and the more local public communications that should be considered a vital part of their public culture and deserve amnesty from any impending laws.
In a neoliberal world dictated by the cult of the image and the fantasies it generates, how can one escape the visual pollution? Advertising, inherent in consumerism, saturates our gaze, our existence. More and more collectives, associations, tend to be interested in the visual nuisance. How to end a public space punctuated by advertising? How to integrate art in the streets? To denounce the discomfort of a sleeping society is the characteristic of these protestors.
The Philadelphia Parking Authority wants to install 45 billboards in neighborhood parking lots – but community members and activists aren’t happy with the plans. More [HERE]
I am excited to be working with a huge group of activists and artists around the world on an upcoming project that I hope PublicAdCampaign readers will get involved with. Long story short is a global network of anti-advertising activists have come together to form a transnational partnership called the Subvertisers International. This umbrella organization is spearheading a global call to action between March 22nd and March 25th 2017. The goal is to create a yearly anti-advertising event that will galvanize peoples commitment to the anti-advertising movement in all its forms. Download the Public Call for participation [HERE]
I am not going to even put a picture with this post cause I dont want you to be distracted from this LINK to a CBC radio interview with the curators RJ Rushmore and Caroline Caldwell. In it the two describe a yearlong project to question outdoor advertisings messaging, motivations and prominent placement in our public lives and it is simply a must listen for anyone who visits this site.
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]
Advertising Shits In Your Head combines theory and practice in one short book about the modern subvertising movement. Featuring: Public Ad Campaign, Brandalism, Special Patrol Group and Dr. D.
Expected delivery: January 2017
Read a sample chapter: Advertising Shits in Your Head - Chapter 1
Advance praise for Advertising Shits In Your Head:
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“Have you ever stopped to wonder why you know so much about things you are not interested in: brands, products, courses, colleges, holidays you might take, clothes you should wear? You may think yourself immune, but advertising is subliminal. You might ignore the Facebook posts that are ‘sponsored’, the animated billboards, and you may always skip the adverts as fast as you can. But to ignore them you first had to recognise them for what they were. And even in that small instance of time a logo has seeped into your subconscious. If advertising didn’t hit the target it would not be made. You are the target." – Danny Dorling (Author)
"Advertising Shits In Your Head provides a history of the practice (going back to the early 70s), alarming research and theory on the effects of the industry, advice about how to take part (including legal information) as well as several stunning case studies. This is essential reading for all who want to fight back against 'the most powerful and sustained system of propaganda in human history'.” – Jamie Kelsey-Fry (Contributing-Editor, New Internationalist)
"Advertising Shits In Your Head concisely describes, through unique first-hand accounts, the range of concerns adressed by today's subvertising community. From a right to the city argument, to the belief that advertising is the biggest obstacle to avoiding catastrophic climate change, Advertising Shits In Your Head envisions a movement looking far beyond culture jamming and corporate identity sabotage." – Jordan Seiler (Public Ad Campaign)
"Advertising Shits in Your Head gives form and context to culture jamming practices in the 21st Century. It is an important contribution on the path to realising the possibilities of creative practice as a vehicle for social change. Providing important theoretical and historical context that unites the twin strands of activism – creativity and resistance – it shows how creative minds are getting together in the age of digital networks to hack space and place, and challenge the presence of capitalist values within our public, private and cultural spaces. Advertisers most definitely shit in your head: this book is here to stop them." – Bill Posters (Brandalism)
"Advertising is a gigantic machine for creating human misery. It's a sustained psychological assault on the population and it is hard to overstate the brutal and permanent damage it does to us as individuals, to society, and to the planet itself. This book is a manual on how to begin the process of dismantling the machinery of advertising: how to interrupt it, sabotage it and one day, maybe, destroy it entirely." – Darren Cullen (Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives)
"Once advertising has shit in your head, you're going to need something to clean it up with; I couldn't recommend this book more highly." – Dr. D
In 2014, 63 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 third year again!
The task is easy, go out on November 27th and remove as many advertisements as you can.
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 Facebook, sending it directly to the NOAD email, or sharing it on social media with the hashtag #NOADday.
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.
WHEN:
November 27th (anytime)
WHO?
Anyone who thinks actively in what’s a democratic public space, whether adbusters, activists, artists, graffiti writers, street artists, sociologists, philosophers...
WHY?
To reduce the impact of advertising. To question the lack of decision of the citizens in terms of the configuration of the public space
—which belongs to us— and to reduce the mental/visual pollution that we are daily exposed to. On November 28/29 the “Buy Nothing Day” is celebrated by the people all around the world. The “BND” was a Project promoted by Adbusters magazine, where the participants avoid buying during 24 hours.
The idea of making our Project one day before “BND” is a poetical way to reduce the impact of advertising on the buying decision of the citizens.
HOW?
For those who don’t have a key, we made a tutorial on how to make your own key.
You can watch it here.
If this one is not working in your city or you prefer to buy other keys you can do it here.
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.
A Brief Look At Why I Remove And Replace Outdoor Advertising
People often ask me why I do ad-takeovers and promote similar civil disobedience amongst my peers. The simple answer is that I believe ingesting too much commercial media (advertising) makes it harder for us to be mindful conscientious citizens, and anything we can do to make our personal and collective behavior better is a step in the right direction to achieving a more just and equitable world. This belief is supported by scientific research into advertising’s psychological impact on the individual, along with the resulting behavioral challenges it creates for us socially, but which is beyond the scope of this essay.
Buried right below the surface of that “why” question is another, and that is what task is accomplished by your ad-takeover work? What wrong is being righted by removing or replacing outdoor ads? And ultimately, will or could ad-takeover work ever result in real social change? I believe the answer is yes, which is why I continue use it as the main focus of my artistic project.
Advertising aggression and the desired city:
Advertising is the promotion and dissemination of messages whose primary interest is to convince you to align yourself with the advertisers agenda. Often this is the purchase of a product or service, which gives the entire affair a somewhat nefarious atmosphere as the practitioners work to persuade you to their ends.
For this reason most of us are skeptical of advertising and its goals, particularly those of us who see the economic and environmental issues that our society faces, in large part due to the rampant consumerism fueled by advertising itself. Many of us also deride advertising for the social and psychological impact it has on us by preying on our insecurities or appealing to our own self-interest. Even when advertising is at its best and masquerades its activities as a gentle nudge, we see its intention with the clarity offered by the inescapable truth that it is out to change our minds.
Because of this, we all seem to intuit that the form itself is to be avoided and when asked about a more conscientious media environment, that the individual advertising tactics are irrelevant. More often than not we seek to avoid the pressure placed on us by advertising.
And yet an increasing number of our cities are offering more and more space to these messages. Today, this situation seems inevitable because so many of us have grown up in cities surrounded by commercial media, and to question it seems like a fanciful dalliance towards a dead end. We sit by and watch as billboards and placards have given way to a vast infrastructure on which outdoor advertising resides including our buses(inside and outside)-bus stops-subways-subway stations-subway platforms-subway entrances-subway fare cards-taxi cabs(inside and outside)-pedicabs-trolleys-airports-freestanding placards-building facades-sidewalks-construction hoardings-wall wraps-pop up marketing events, etc. etc. Even the skies are written on in the summer months in New York.
The deep saturation of our public environments with commercial media is written into the language and strategies employed by the industry itself, offering “station domination” campaigns to compete in already heavily media saturated environments. The fact of the matter is that navigating public space in our cities involves interacting with large amounts of commercial advertising.
As a lifelong city resident, this obvious schism between individual desire and how cities are currently practiced is difficult to swallow. It seems to defy the idealistic utopian logic of cities that I fondly invoke when I dare to dream of cities at their best; the one in which our collective will sets the groundwork upon which our cities forms and function are determined. Even my practical understanding of cities doesn’t seem to jive with the idea that what we seek to avoid, would be thrust upon us.
The obvious reason for this discrepancy between the desired city and the actual city is that there is a lot of money being made on advertising content, and more importantly on the spaces that it occupies. Like so many aspects of our lives, the public environment itself has been monetized, and it would appear against our better judgment. As unfair as that might seem, this impropriety pales in comparison to the fact that the money being made through the sale of our shared public resource is done so by selling you and your attention to companies intent on capturing it.
Your eyes are worth money and unwittingly you have become a product being bought and sold between commercial media companies and the businesses that they sell your public environment to. When looked at so plainly it doesn’t make sense to me that there would be advertising in public space at all for the simple reason that it uses a personal resource, to do something against our collective will, in order to benefit someone else.
The false justification for outdoor advertising:
The prevailing logic behind advertising (and why we allow our cities formal arrangement to defy common sense) is that it pays for something we want in return for the nuisance of being distracted for someone else’s purpose. Public space adheres to this same logic and we are asked to believe that advertising is an integral part of maintaining our cities infrastructure.
While advertising revenue is significant, the idea that advertising is a necessary evil we must endure in order to keep our trains running falls apart under closer scrutiny. Immense profits are extracted from our cities by out of home media giants like JCDecaux that defy the assumption advertising is anything more than a way to turn the city into a profitable venture. If advertising were truly intent on nourishing underfunded public good, we would see to it that all of the profits were invested back into our city, and this is simply not the case.
Instead, the city is auctioned off and deals are made on our behalf to share portions of the revenue made from the attention we didn’t want to put on offer in the first place. So comfortable have we become with this inequitable deal that we have given up on the simple expectation of reciprocation from advertising, fully conceding that advertisings presence is just a part of modern life.
Illegal advertising, ephemeral marketing, brand engagement events, and a spectacular array of advertising techniques that fly under the radar of public policies attempting to capture small portions of public advertising revenue, run rampant in our cities. The premise that advertising should be endured because it provides a public service is simply false.
An informed critical response:
So I go out and remove ads without thought to the legality of my actions, but with an understanding of their justness when perceived from a practical perspective. I do so because like so many other forms of civil disobedience aimed at private property, it calls attention to an aspect of society that I think warrants closer inspection, but which is difficult to approach through more traditional channels of democracy.
Given my concerns about the effects of advertising on our ability to fully live as mindful conscientious citizens, which is borne out in social and psychological research, addressing the issue in a way that will result in advertisings removal, is my top priority. I have chosen to do so through civil disobedience, but there are more traditional methods available that I have forsaken and a brief explanation of why is important to answer if we want to get to the heart of what good comes of ad-takeover work.
Like many cities, New York controls the proliferation of outdoor advertising by permitting both the companies that operate outdoor advertising businesses, as well as the individual signs when applicable. This allows cities to keep some semblance of control over public space, while demanding revenue in the form of contractual agreements and yearly fees.
In 2009 I became aware that the NYC Department of Buildings had put its records online in an easily searchable database. This allowed me to look up the legality of many of the signs that looked down on our streets and to eventually realize that a company called NPA City Outdoor was operating hundreds of locations without permits, and therefore illegally. I began the painstaking process of calling the DOB Sign Enforcement Unit, tasked with policing outdoor advertising offenses, to report the illegal signage as I came upon it.
This exhaustive and lengthy process began to turn the slow wheels of justice and I watched as violations and fines were levied against each offending location. The problem was that none of the signs came down and it became clear to me that the city itself was not prepared to take on the legal might of a business with the deep pockets afforded by advertising revenue. Legal channels alone were simply not enough to combat this problem.
I then organized a large-scale civil disobedience project called NYSAT that would illegally, but very publicly, condemn the company by bringing out hundreds of citizens to whitewash all of their billboards and replace the imagery with public artworks. It was hoped that through media attention and a little bit of embarrassment, we could grease the wheels of justice and set in motion a series of events that would eventually lead to the actual removal of the illegal signs and the company operating them.
This is exactly what happened and I watched with excitement as NPA City Outdoor began a five-year battle with New York that they would eventually lose. Addressing legal advertising with these same tactics would be harder, but it seemed that prompted by a little civilian led direct action, the legal structures we had in place could actually reign in advertising and begin to remove advertising from public space entirely.
I don’t believe I could have been more wrong. Within a year of NPA loosing their court battles and removing most of their signs from the streets of NYC, their advertising tactics were tweaked and they began operating in the city once again. It was at this point that I came to realize that the profits for advertising were too great to maintain any real enforcement of the publics will. In fact, cities themselves were helpless despite strict rules and regulations; only a full change in public opinion towards advertising in public space would result in the changes I wanted to see.
So I returned to my tactics of removing advertising from public space without permission and attempting to promote similar civil disobedience amongst my peers. I did so less because I thought that this was the road to full removal of advertising from public space, than because it was all I had left.
Though it would appear disheartening, I quickly realized that my goal when doing ad-takeover work should not be to remove the ads themselves but to question the medium more generally. What we are doing when we do ad-takeover work is not righting any wrong, but using the medium itself to question its perceived authority in the hopes that those watching will think more deeply about the schism between what they want and what they see in front of their eyes.
In fact, to say this is accomplished through individual advertising takeovers is a little bit of self deception as most advertising takeovers go unnoticed. What we are truly trying to accomplish when we do advertising takeovers is change public opinion, and that task is done through personification and our lived experience. Like most civil disobedience against private property, my continued disregard for outdoor advertising in general and the rules that govern right and wrong in relation to it, allows me to be a focal point upon which the issue can be discussed more deeply.
Through discussion comes understanding, and through understanding comes belief, and what I believe is that cities can be better.
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.
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.
Anti-Australia Day posters, graffiti plastered around Melbourne's CBD Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/antiaustralia-day-posters-graffiti-plastered-around-melbournes-cbd-20160126-gmdzw8.html#ixzz46s2Asw6d Follow us: @theage on Twitter | theageAustralia on Facebook
Turns out Melbourne has thier own little movement as well. Is anyone besides me keeping track of the incredible boon in anti-ad movements or groups focused around using public commercial media space for the collective good? It's astounding. makes you think there might be a legislative agenda on the horizon.
Anti-Australia Day posters and graffiti have been plastered across Melbourne's CBD as hundreds of people rally outside Parliament House over Aboriginal rights.
The large posters featuring the Aboriginal flag, which read "Sovereignty Never Ceded" and include the slogans #InvasionDay2016 and #NoPrideInGenocide, have been placed over existing advertisements at tram stops and train stations in the CBD.
Read more: [HERE] Follow us: @theage on Twitter | theageAustralia on Facebook
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?
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]
Reminiscent of the AAA's industry outreach projects, this Brandalism campaign asks those in the advertising profession to give in to thier conscience and switch sides. Amazing!
Below is a press release I was sent about RAP's recent action at the JCDecaux headquarters. While this all might strike people as borderline insane, it is important to remember that advertising and it the collective influence of commercial media is not a natural state of existence but rather a momentary manifestation of capitalism run amok. Removing its influence would have far reaching positive effects on our society which may help mitigate our effect on the climate, help resolve social issues that surround economic inequality, and generally allow for an atmosphere of collectivity to appear out of a deeply selfish, every man for himself, economic model that dictates large portions of our existence. So maybe this is less crazy than you think and simply beginning of something new.
ENGLISH --------------------------------------------------------------- RAP invited itself to JC Decaux's headquarters ahead of the international day against advertising
Ahead of the international day against advertising taking place on the 25th of March, the french association Resistance à l’Agresion Publicitaire (Resistance to Advertising Agresion) invited itself at the headquarters of the paris-based multinational company of billboards JC Decaux.
On the banner : "Let's free the planet of ads"
Khaled Gaiji, President of RAP declares: “ in addition to violate citizens freedom of (no) reception by invading public space with advertising, the world leader of billboards also systematically violate French laws on billboards. We are here today to denounce this situation and ask to JC Decaux Executive office an appointment in order to discuss solutions to this issue that has already lasted too long”.
After unpholding a banner “let’s free up the planet of ads” next to JC Decaux‘ headerquarter’s logo, Julien Simon, Human Resources Director, came to meet the President of RAP and committed to organize an appointment as soon as possible. RAP will make sure this commitment does not go unheeded.
