Two Beers In: A Tipsy Political Round Table

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]

Contemporary Art Stavanger Interview

Big thanks to Heather Jones for taking the time to listen to me rant on and on about my work. 

VIA: Contemporary Art Stavanger

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]

One of the Most Recognized Artists in the World Writes on the Streets

Callie has always been an inspiration for myself and many other artists who watch her continually lead by example. Her work, time and again, finds new and innovative ways to defy categorization as Art, and instead be social, political, and transformational for anyone involved. (sadly words I just dont equate with art) Anyways, she has a short interview with The Nation in which she is qouted with what I believe to be at the heart of my own process, an idealized street and public art, and how we understand properly functioning public spaces. 

I think that when we are creatively able to set our hands on something, and able to be a part of the small and creative decisions of making our place, we feel at home; we care about our home; we are able to feel more invested in it and take care of it. Giving people a creative outlet, to be part of having a say in what their city looks like, is part of a healthy community.

VIA: The Nation

Caledonia Curry, a.k.a. Swoon, is among the most recognized street artists in the world. Her work is now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. 
 She has also created projects with communities in New Orleans, Pennsylvania, and Haiti, as well as a floating city on rafts. More [HERE]

Consumerism, Values, and What Really Matters: An Interview with Tim Kasser

Sometimes PublicAdCampaign can feel like an ongoing artist v advertiser grudge match whose only goal is to cause enough havoc on the streets to allow us all to sleep a little better at night. The truth is that our goal is to address advertisings use of public space because the repetitive consumption of commercial messages is doing serious harm to each one of us and by default the collective as well. Advertising, being the predominant media through which we ingest culture and our world view, is responsible in large part for the ways in which we prioritize our lives, set up our long terms goals, and live those lives right through to the end. Research suggests that the priorities advertising is instilling are hurting our minds and planet, so lets address the problem in order to alleviate some pretty heavy burdens as we prepare to address even larger issues like how we keep this planet breathing through 2050. 

New Dream talked with Tim Kasser, a recent addition to our Board of Directors, about his research on consumerism and people’s values, and how he tries to resist consumer pressures in his own life and family. Kasser is professor and chair of Psychology at Knox College in Illinois and the author of numerous books and articles on materialism, values, and goals.

How did you come to study issues of consumerism and values? Was there a defining moment that inspired you to investigate this topic so deeply for so many years?

When I was working on my Ph.D. in psychology in the early 1990s, I became interested in how people construct their lives. That led me to study people’s goals and what they were aspiring to create out of their lives. One day, I was running some statistics and getting ready to examine how personal well-being relates to prioritizing goals for money and possessions relative to other kinds of goals. I remember sitting in front of the computer thinking, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if people who cared more about goals for money and possessions were less happy?” More [HERE]

Ad Criticism and Public Space Activism in One - Vermibus Interview

photo by JUST

Vermibus came onto our radar a little over two years ago with some arresting ad busting imagery and the motivation to go big consistently. Initially I wasnt fond of the results because they weren't transformative enough. I still saw models and ad campaigns through the smeared inks. While the work was critical of the advertising content, it spoke nothing about public space and its use for a wide range of commercial messaging systems. This last component of ad takeover work is important to me and can be solved easily by simply denying the typical ad imagery a place in public space and re-appropriating that space for some non sequitur. By leaving the ad content in the final image, Vermibus' work didn't alleviate the commercial burden and therefor didn't free my mind to ponder other significant uses of public space.

I was wrong. Not only does Vermibus exhibit the wide variety of keys and tools he has made with which to access public advertising venues, but his campaigns are so large that the individual image is subsumed by the larger project. Both of these aspects of Vermibus' process adress the public space issues that I have come to expect in good ad takeover artists' work. The first aspect I think is obvious, but the second demands a bit of an explanation.

When I first started doing ad takeovers while I was attending RISD, one of the main dilemas I faced was that of authorship. How could I justify removing advertising if I was simply replacing it with advertisements of my own? This meant not only could I not sign my work, but that I became afraid to settle into one type of imagery for fear that a recognizable style would be as bad, or worse than simply signing my work. It was important to me that people see my ad takeovers not as a personal demand for more of my own space, but as an anonymous demand for space in general. And so it was decided that I would slowly seed the world with hidden gems that would be discovered, pondered, and then left to alter history in the smallest of ways, a weak gravity between two asteroids whose paths will change a distant planets history billions of years in the future.

Since then I have found that while this quaint personal activism has its merit, it has its obvious downsides, a slow march towards progress if ever there was one. Mobstr made it clear for me two years  ago in Stavanger at the NuArt festival, repetition and recognition had thier benefits. Stavanger is a small town and I was able to blanket the entire downtown area with only 32 takeovers. Acting over the course of two hours one night, there wasn't an advertisement left in downtown when Mobstr returned from his painting work elsewhere in the city. He explained that the continuous repetition of my imagery as he entered downtown, made him think about the shear number of ads and the burden with which they weigh on public space. For me this was a concrete reason for the imagery to be recognizable, at least within a single project.

While the individual images Vermibus puts up are ad criticisms, the fact that he often goes so large in a city causes the viewer to see the repetition of his images in the same way Mobstr saw my work, in a spatial dimension as opposed to a single location. Who cares if the viewer was still thinking about Calvin Klien, or H&M? They would also be confronted with the greater concern about the proliferation of these and other images within the larger public space context.  In some ways that makes Vermibus' work better than most because he manages to adress two separate concerns about advertising in public space at once. It's incredibly interesting work and the reason we just had to ask him a few questions for the PublicAdCampaign site. Enjoy

INTERVIEW:

1-When and why did you start doing advertising takeover work? 
1) I’ve been actively painting in the world of graffiti since 1998 but there was a time when my life changed and had taken a more personal way and at the same time with more social awareness. It was when I moved to Berlin in 2011 when I started taking things seriously about the public space. My anti-advertising work started almost right after I arrived to Berlin but I needed around a year to understand what I was doing. I think that being an ad buster is not only putting something on advertising spaces, but an internal change process in all senses.

2-Your work seems to both eliminate advertising, while simultaneously referencing the fashion iconography that is so prevalent in todays advertising imagery. Can you explain to PublicAdCampaign readers why you only work with fashion advertising outdoors? 
2) There are lots of people who have been talking for a long time about brands and their lack of ethics regarding their workers or a certain number of internal policies and the truth is that there are more people who can talk about this better than me. I come from the picture world and have always been very interested in the world of advertising iconography. In my last job as a photographer I had some bad experiences regarding what the beauty standards should be like and I took advantage of that situation to make a public reflection of what has affected me personally. On the other hand, after some time working just about fashion advertising I figured out advertising should be more aggressive but without being loutish, because the message is lost when there’s a destruction. The best way to do anti-advertising is just taking the ad away and not putting anything. That’s how the NO-AD project was born. By chance my first intervention on advertising was leaving it blank when I took the poster to work later on it, therefore NO-AD has always been pretty linked to my job. Now I follow both lines.

3-You exhibit the tools you use to break into outdoor advertising locations when you show your work, which leads me to believe that promoting access to public media space is part of your critique. Can you tell us your thoughts on the relationship between outdoor advertising and public space? 
3) As a graffiti writer I’m very attached to materials auto-production. A lot of us have done our own kind of markers or inks and I always saw it something very personal and nice to show, but in the world of graffiti there’s a lot of secrecy and it isn’t normal someone tells you how he makes the acid or which inks he has combined to get a certain colour or composition. I don’t mind showing my keys because I think it is a very personal part of my job and it’s nice to show them. I don’t have any kind of secrecy at the time of explaining how they are made, but the truth is I’m extremely careful of to whom I give that info because not all of them will use it for anti-advertising purposes. I don’t believe everyone is aware of what opening this shelter takes, what should be done or not and overall, I think you must have tried it by yourself before ordering the keys online as if you browse in Google. Whoever really wants to intervene advertising must make an effort trying it himself, otherwise he will not worth it in the same way as if he had been looking for his own way to do the key. Although I appreciate there are people like you who make keys at home because the less advertising there is, the better. One way or another that’s the final goal.

4-I noticed some of your gallery work is similar in process to your outdoor work, but uses fashion magazine advertising or photography. What is the relationship between your indoor and outdoor work? 
4) There’s no aesthetic difference, the process is more less the same on books, magazines or advertising. The difference is the used space. When I exhibit in a gallery I want people to focus on the plastic and emotional part of my paintings and not only on the fact that I intervene advertising on the streets. When I work on the streets I want people to focus on the activist part of my job and to think about throughout my art. More often than not I exhibit posters on the streets and put them in a gallery. That’s not strictly ad busting but it has something to see with anti-advertising because if there’s a poster hanged on a gallery means that there’s an empty advertising space on the streets.

5-What is your favorite story from your ad busting adventures? 
5) Making “Dissolving Europe” travelling was a great and intense experience in all senses and it is difficult to beat all the adventures we lived in those 18 days doing interventions every day. Bu there are also some other emotive moments such as conversations with people about what they think about the interventions, normally people completely unrelated with this movement…It is incredible all what they have to say, I have learnt a lot in all conversations I had. All those people have made me think about everything and grow both as an artist and as a person.

More from Vermibus [HERE]

No New Enemies - Interview

No New Enemies was kind enough to do a little interview with me when they invited me to join their fantastic network of contemporary artists. The interview focuses on the most recent Echo project in New York but delves into some of the larger PublicAdCampaign issues as well. If you are interested in the Echo work, I highly suggest checking out the interview at this [LINK]. NNE supports its artists by offering work for sale, which you can find in the web shop. Enjoy

Partizaning - Participatory Urban Replanning

Shriya Malhotra just did a nice interview piece over at Partizaning, a wonderful urban activism site everyone should check out [HERE]
___________________________________

Our cities are increasingly dominated by advertisements. Media literacy is taken for granted, and people seem unaware of the thousands of images they are absorbing each day, or of the impact they might have. In 2007, the mayor of the Brazilian city of São Paulo passed a ‘clean city law’, forbidding any form of commercial communication outdoors. And as a result, artists started to occupy walls with colors and shapes. But legalities aside, globally, people are retaliating against the capitalist domination of free space by ad-busting and hacking billboards to un-clutter public space.

For the complete interview [HERE]

Interview by Helen Soteriou for No New Enemies

I was recently asked to do an interview with Helen Soteriou for the No New Enemies Network. A big thanks to Helen for making it happen and to NNE for letting me grace their features section.

When was the PublicAdCampaign set-up and why?

PublicAdCampaign began when I started replacing advertisements on NYC train platforms in late 2000. I would create a single image and post it repeatedly over every ad in the station, usually covering between 30 to 90 ads at a time. While I continue to do individual projects like this, over the years PublicAdCampaign has grown to encompass many other activities.

Full Interview [HERE]

Pantheon - A History of Art From the Streets of NYC

The Pantheon "catalog" launched over a week ago and it is less a catalog and more a treasure chest consisting of 450 pages of alternative street art history. Part picture book, part academic investigation, this collection focuses on 33 graf and street artists in an attempt to ponder the significance and scope of unauthorized public works on our culture at large.

Inside there are photos of the exhibition installation as well as interviews, histories, and site specific projects that are all worth reading. Take a moment and get your own copy...

Very Nearly Almost Issue # 15

I was recently interviewed for Very Nearly Almost issue#15. While I was excited about how the interview came out, I was even happier to be featured in a magazine along with some amazing artists whose work has changed street interaction and public curatorial expectations. A special thanks to RJ for conducting the interview and pushing for my inclusion in the mag. Buy a copy [Here]

Ludo Answers 5 Questions For PublicAdCampaign

When I realize someone is working over advertising on a consistent basis, I like to ask them a few questions about their work. I am not interested in the profound, but rather keeping a short record of these artists reactions to similar questions. Ludo was kind enough to answer a few for us and we thank him for his time and his work on the street.

1-Where are you from and where did the name LUDO originate from?
I live in Paris right in the centre but grew up in the suburbs. ludo is an abbreviation of my name. No real meanings behind just like my good friends call me.

2-Ludo, your work can be found on side streets and over advertising, what is the difference between your work posted on the street and that specifically targeting advertising?
I think the work I put on the street is kind of more abstract for me. I mean it's more open and everybody can have his own opinion, hate it or not for sure, find a message, see it as an other crap decoration, like it because of the flowers,.... .Then it lives thanks to the walls textures or whatever integration that makes it more "alive". Over billboards, I think I already give some clues and people minds are already driven because of the advertising spaces. I want it to be as a reaction to the common commercial visual codes. Like using a logo and an image that has nothing to do with it, Chanel selling an apple with a camera inside ??? I want to push that till the concept that the visual and the message has really no relation with the brand but because the logo is here then it becomes validated into these spaces. Also, the difference with the stuff on walls is that I'm more interested in the message and how to hijack a brand than the art. It's more about trying to create an impact inside this 3x4m frame.

3-What gives you the right to take private property to exhibit your own ideas and images?
I can't consider the city walls as private property.... I try to respect the people living where I will put my stuff but I've never asked myself if I have the right or not. But you're right, it's not me who has the right or no, it's more everyone should express themselves or their opinion using walls or not. City should put billboards accessible to people just to write something, an idea, a poem,...whatever. That would be beautiful, "for the benefit of the general interest".
Maybe bus shelters are something else in terms of violation and law. When you put your piece inside the box, there is a real trespass I believe. It's funny because not so long ago I received emails from people working for CBS Outdoors, basically asking me how much I would ask to create a piece over one of their billboards that they could use it after to show then sell more spaces to communication agencies. Nice paradox !

4-your hybridization of the natural and synthetic world seems to translate well into ad takeover work, what do you want the viewer to take away from your imagery?
Thank you. I think something like "What the fuck ???" would work for me. A little bit of chaos into the world of standards and preconceived ideas.

5-What is your favorite place or moment in your city?
Right now, honestly, I just enjoy having a little studio where I can be alone with my stuff, draw and listen some music. Very simple.

EyeSaw Interview-Ad Takeovers in London

A few days ago I received an email from Eyesaw regarding the recent MaSAT project. I was aware of Eye Saw's work but not the extent of his practice. I asked him a few quick questions regarding his work which you can read below.

Whats your name and where are you from?

-I like to be known as Eyesaw I try to keep my private life separate from my work (although I never stop working in my head), I do not like to disclose to much information with people that i'm unfamiliar with. I live in London Uk.

When did you start working on the street?

-I originally Started out painting graffiti in the streets about 2001 although was not very good, mainly tags and thro-up"s. I then moved onto stencils as it was quick and could get a message across rather than just getting a my name up. I then had a break for a short while and studied BA Hons graphic design.

when did you start working over advertising if this came later?

-I started working over advertising in 2008 I have a disregard for authority and don't like being told what to do, how to act and what I should buy to make me cool or make my life better.

If you switched to working over advertising, why? if there was not switch, why do you choose to work over advertising?

-Studying my degree opened my eyes to the world we live in, I had researched a lot about advertising and society. I was very interested how advertising has painted a distorted image of the world and the consumer. At uni we were encouraged to seek careers in this field to which I had no interest, I made a conscious decision there and then that would use what i had learnt to stick two fingers up to the advertisers.

What do you want passerby to take away from interacting with one of your pieces?

-Using phenomenology, I aim to make the viewer question their surroundings and the world we live in and their role in society. By placing my work in prime advertising space the passer-by is almost fooled into believing my work is an advert selling more shit they don't need. As my work offers no explanation as to what is being sold, the viewer is made to ask their own questions and draw their own conclusions. As a result I gain great satisfaction knowing I have removed a crap advert from circulation and replaced it with one of my works and just maybe open someone’s eyes to society’s downfalls.

What is your favorite thing to do in your city?

-I'm a people watcher I love taking in culture and looking out for little things that others miss or take for granted.

www.eye-saw.net

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]

Tune In Tonight! Radio Provocateur Interview

Tune in tonight for PublicAdCampaign's second appearance on Radio Provocateur. This weekly hour long radio broadcast, brought to you by Danny Valdes, highlights radical politics and activist agendas. We will be speaking about what has happened with PublicAdCampaign over the last year and what we have in store for 2011.

Peeking Behind the Veil: Princess Hijab

Janelle Grace has a wonderful interview with Princess Hijab on HyperAllergic. I highly suggest taking a look.

I sit down with my laptop in a quiet, central Brooklyn café, not far from Prospect Park on a slightly overcast day in August to interview the mysterious Parisian street artist Princess Hijab. I order a San Pellegrino with lime; she abstains from any snacks or beverages. Despite the time difference from France, she’s alert and ready to engage with me. I go into the interview knowing how she guards her anonymity, and the concrete details of her identity remain elusive – this is an email interview after all. [More Here]

Interview With Mobstr from Newcastle England

Once in a while we find an artist working in public space over advertising and want to know more about why they target these spaces. I recently became aware of Mobstr's work in the UK after seeing a "collaboration" between him and the Newcastel city council. His works over advertising as well as on the street speak to the viewer and question our relationship to our public environment and the city as canvas. Below Mobstr answers a few questions about his process, his relationship to his city, and his motivations for working without authorization.

1-Can you define what public space means to you.

I guess I think of public space in a city as the areas in which everyone is allowed physically access to. I am not sure if public space entails anything more than this.

2-With that definition in mind, why do you work in the public?

We’re indoctrinated with the belief that graffiti (or now known as street art) is a blight on our space yet the majority of us happily walk around the visual bombardment of advertising without a moment of questioning its justification. We’ll happily put a six metre wide billboard up on the side of a shop or house convincing you the latest innovative toothbrush will enrich your life yet when someone paints a picture on some brick we suddenly become offended. What is the difference between putting your image on the street via the means of a billboard or taking it into your own hands and spraying it on a wall? The billboard is legal and the spray paint image is not. Why? One is endorsed by money and the other by a creative spirit. I know which one wins out for me and ultimately which one creates the image I would rather walk around my city and look at.

3-Why do you feel you have the right to use public space and in particular public advertising space?

Our visual surroundings are very important to us. They dictate our mood, well being and satisfaction with where we live. The people who decide how we visually use our space have got it wrong. They want pictures of the latest fruit juice dripping with alluring condensation so I run to the shop and quench my thirst. I want something quirky and different. Something which makes you smile, which makes you question, which makes you think.... even if it is “why the fuck is that there?” I don’t have the money to pay to use billboards so I just go and do it anyway. Billboards are ugly and dominating. For these reasons I like to subvert billboards.

4-Is there a difference between your work over advertising and your other work on the street?

It is all about context. A lot of my work is site specific and this strongly applies to the use of billboards. When it comes to painting on a billboard I like to use anti-advertising. I try to make them counterproductive, to work against their own purpose. I think “What is the last thing a billboard would say?” and then I put that on it. I recently heard through a friend someone had taken a photo of one of my billboards thinking it was legitimate. With this is mind I might start doing the opposite and make “adverts” which are so blunt and to the point that hopefully people will question their authenticity.

5-How do you feel about the city you live in?

I tend to think of cities nowadays in terms of painting opportunities and Newcastle is difficult in these terms. It is crawling with police and cameras. Here illegal art is faces a very strict zero tolerance stance. I recently did this piece on the side of a burnt out building. It was situated in a cove in the wall which had become an improvised public litter zone. Discarded beer cans, empty wrappers and all kinds of shit were strewn around there. Within two weeks my piece had been buffed yet all the rubbish still remained. This would suggest people are happy to put up with garbage but not a painting on a wall. I hope this isn’t true but it demonstrates the absurd mindset that governs what is acceptable in my city.

6-tell us about one of your favourite experiences in public involving a person you didn't know.

I am not sure if it is one of my favourite experiences but it is interesting. I had just been doing a piece on a billboard and I had botched it. So I had to start all over again. While I am painting this guy rides up and asks me, “Are you meant to be doing that?” I make some council censoring excuse but he knows my game which is when he tells me he’s a writer. He offers to help out but we agree it’s better to come back with more appropriate equipment as I was making do with what I had. So we decided to go a bit down the road to have a chat. Quite instantly his mood changed and the chat evolves to the guy telling me that what I do is bullshit. It turns out this guy is one of those fundamentalist graffiti writers who believes you are only allowed to use spray paint for free hand use etc... I tried to explain that just because I use spray paint doesn’t mean that what he and I do is necessarily comparable. You don’t critically compare Picasso and Rothko because they both used a paint brush. He ended up getting really angry with me. When it got to the point he was saying he was going to knock me flat I decided to back off.

Interview For Student Dissertation

After finding me through Poster Boy, this interview was given to an artist and student at the University of Brighton who wishes to remain anonymous. They told me that they are finishing their last year of study in graphic design, and are writing a dissertation on the theme 'is street art reclaiming public space?' Having interviewed Ron English, Dr. D, and Poster Boy about this already, I look forward to reading the final paper. If they are okay with us disseminating the final piece, we will post it here.

Do you think street art in itself is a political act or does the content or message of the piece need to have a clear political message?

Until Street Art and Graffiti production on unsolicited walls is legalized, these acts will continue to be political even if the content is not. Whether or not the practitioner admits it, putting work up on the street illegally is a demand for a public space that is conducive to public curation and participation. Street artists and graffiti artists, or property outlaws, as they are referred to by some lawyers, express a "willingness to break the law that signals the intensity of his or her dissenting position" on how public space is used. I think this is a very important social health issue in our modern cities that must be resolved for the public environment to reach its full potential. Being able to interact with public space on your own terms is an important part of realizing your potential as a public citizen. When you produce something visual in public space that you care about it is like leaving a piece of your self behind. Once work in the public is created, a permanent connection to that space develops which endures beyond your leaving. In this way, street artists and graffiti artists' works are a way of connecting people with the spaces they live in.

Are you inspired by any particular political or artistic movement? What would you say is the main message behind the stuff you do?

I am inspired by social justice movements, public space reclamation projects, and the tireless work of non permission based public art practitioners who create unauthorized moments of serendipity in our cities every day. There are many aspects to the PublicAdCampaign project but the most important is the promotion of public participation in the creation of our shared spaces. Anyone who goes out and creates in public without permission is expressing their desire for a public space which appreciates their individuality and their voice. One of the forces preventing this type of behavior is outdoor advertising and the supremacy of the commercial message over the individual message. In this way I am inspired by the uninspiring state of public space and its tendency to give credence to the commercial over the public. We must understand that public space is one of the last spaces in which we can demand a non privatized arena for dialogue. Most other forums, including print, television and recently the internet have become controlled by corporate interest and therefor do not allow meaningful democratic thought. If our public spaces are to function well for our society then we must prevent them from falling prey to the same corporate control and allow them to be the last vestiges of our democracy.

What part do you think the internet has played in the growing popularity of street art?

The internet has obviously facilitated the spread of this international movement. Most of us are informed daily of new and innovative street actions through the web. This online community is an important part of the street art movement particularly for those practicing this art form in smaller cities which might not have a flourishing scene already in place. The one thing that the internet cannot relay is the experience of street art which is an incredibly important part of the art form. The one on one interaction between viewer and creator holds much of the power behind the work. It is the experience of finding, being given a gift by someone which asks little of the viewer, that invests the work with such power and makes a trivial moment into a deep felt connection to the city space and the community at large. Street art is a way of creating dialogue in a physical environment, and without the viewer finding the piece, or interacting with the work, the art falls short of its potential. If street art was only experienced through the internet its affect would be greatly diminished.

How do you feel about the fact that some companies use street art as their advertising, both by using the aesthetics of it in regular advertising and sometimes using the methods of street artists (‘guerilla advertising’, street installations, stickers, clever stuff and so on)? Is there any danger in this?

Advertising's co-opting of street arts tactics is extremely problematic. Advertising is notorious for stealing artistic innovations in aesthetics and design. It can only be expected that this would happen with graffiti and street art. Despite this, what gives these two forms their power is not their aesthetics, but their tactics. The emotional connection that is a response to stumbling upon a beautiful piece of artwork, placed unassumingly in our public space is at the heart of this practice. This connection is made more powerful by the fact that the viewer is asked to give nothing in return to the artist. In fact the work opens up a space for contemplation and communication that is more akin to a concert experience than a gallery experience in my mind. One may ponder the motivations, messages, placement, and context of the artworks, and in doing so engages in a two way conversation with the artist and the space in which it was created. Advertising has as its singular motivation the trapping of your attention to deliver a very specific message or a simple brand recognition. By using the incredibly selfless tactics of street art, advertising tricks the public into engaging it as one would street art, as a gift, with an innocence that is a result of two minds finding each other in the anonymous public arena. Once the fact that the viewer is looking at an advertisement with selfish motivations is revealed, the viewer feels betrayed and this then separates the public from public space. I find myself walking the city streets looking for moments created by street artists and graffiti, knowing they will enrich my experience of the city. If you ask the average citizen how they interact with outdoor advertising on a daily basis, they will tell you that they try to ignore it. The two create completely opposing forms of participation and interaction with the city. When a viewer is tricked by advertising that poses as street art it removes one more reason to engage your environment which separates the average citizen even further from the space that they live in.

What kind of reactions do you get regarding your work? Why do you think people react that way?

As I said before, most people attempt to ignore commercial messages in the public environment. This causes them to categorically ignore the spaces in which advertisements are placed. Because my work reclaims these commercial spaces, I am often battling peoples inherent interest in avoiding them. This causes the work to take on attributes that advertising would not employ like physicality/texture, lack of text, over simplified graphics, and no clear message or meaning. When people do notice my work they are extremely happy to have the moment of pause created by my art and are relieved that they are not being solicited as they move through their public environment. The public's attempt to ignore advertising is a result of its tendency to take from the viewer while my work asks nothing of the viewer but to reflect on its existence, placement, and origin of creation. That said my work is often misunderstood. When my work manifests itself in large scale organizational projects, it is much easier to understand because the execution is much more visible. The execution, or act of creation, holds much of the meaning behind my work and when this is visible it is more clearly understood. The larger organizational projects are the result of the incredible dedication and participation of many like minded individuals intent on bringing this issue to the forefront of people consciousness and this in turn creates a wider audience and therefor clearer objective.

What does the term ‘public space’ mean to you? Who has the right to public space? Is street art a way of reclaiming public space?

Public spaces are those places where we all share an equal voice and right to the city. To me this means not only the streets, but the walls that surround us which impose a multitude of visual conversations. Everyone has the right to public space, so long as they are acting upon it as individuals. In this way, commercial use of public space is an improper use of our public environment because corporations are using money to increase their influence beyond an individual level. Each person should be allowed to impose their own interests on public space, creating a level of noise equivalent to their own means. By paying to disseminate their messages more broadly, commercial entities break this rule and overwhelm the individual, ultimately monopolizing the dialogue that is so important to a healthy engaged public. Beyond this, the commercialization of public spaces ultimately prevents individual usage of public space because we cannot afford to do so. Street art only reclaims public space in that it is illegal for artists to impose their individual voice on the public environment, unless they can afford to do so. The proper use of public space would include the visual articulations of invested parties and therefore accept street art's use of our shared environment as a normal form of public dialogue. For this reason, street art is non-violent political protest attempting to alter what is an acceptable use of our neighborhoods and communities.

Artists Reclaim Public Space: A Conversation with Public Ad Campaign Founder Jordan Seiler

A while back I was asked to speak with Danny Valdes on his first radio broadcast of Radio Provocateur on WVRB radio. You can listen to our talk here. This discussion turned into an article for The Indypendent that you can read here. We were happy to see the first comment on the article was posted by Reverend Billy himself.

Rev Billy Says:
January 8th, 2010 at 10:19 am

That is an energizing vision for New York City. We are mired in a post-great- city provincialism now. New Yorker’s creative life is encased in inbred careers. The arts are unheard-of, for instance, outside of their subcultures of critics, parties and backers. Relinquishing public space is key to the impotence and de-politicization of the arts. My own home art form is theater, and literally nobody has any idea what theater is doing. Meanwhile, the totalizing saturation by varieties of corporate theater on our streets and sidewalks is permitted even when it’s clearly illegal. We’re trained to respond with, what, “good for jobs!” “private property!” “the struggling economy!” Democracy, and a subset of democracy - call it “the greatness of a New York” - depends on re-taking public space.

Flair Magazine-Interview With PublicAdCampaign

You often meet interesting characters on the set of fashion shoots, but Jordan Seiler has a really unusual story. A photography lighting technician, he is also a very busy artist. He created PublicAdCampaign, a project that promotes, as works of art, the illegal occupation of public spaces designated for advertising. His goal? To protest against the distorted use of public spaces by the part of corporations and to return them to the public.

How did you start?

On a whim. I was studying at the Rhode Island School of Design and when I went home to New York and ride the subway, I thought that I would prefer seeing one of my images there instead of advertising.

What’s behind PublicAdCampaign?

Lots of money is made through advertising in public spaces. Unfortunately, we artists cannot afford to pay to exhibit our art; we can only do it illegally. Also, I would definitely like the streets more if we eliminated advertisements: it would reduce the corporate control of these places. They would return to the public, which could use it differently, more artistically.

What is your latest project?

My latest project is National Bestseller.

What is it about?

We took over the advertising spaces in phone booths with the pages of some bestsellers. It wasn’t so much about sharing the content of the book as much as the desire to return this space to the public. Books are loved and shared by many people and so it is only right that they substitute the corporate messages. It is a more democratic form of information.

And the next project?

I’ll be working with over a hundred artists and activists: we will take over 130 advertising billboards around New York.

Is there a political message behind this protest?

We move illegally and without permits, so this too is a form of “opposition”. We want the city to be returned to the public. It would be great if everyone could use it to display new and creative ideas. Public space is one of the last democratic spaces, where each one of us has the same power and the same “value” as the next person.

Working in fashion, you must have worked on the set of advertising campaigns. Isn’t that a contradiction?

Advertising is a tremendous force that guides our desires and persuades us to buy things that we might not even have thought of. When this content is in newspapers or on television or the radio, we can ignore it. But if it’s displayed on billboards, then we can only be subjected to it and we become unwitting slaves to the message, incapable of choosing. I don’t have a problem with advertising per se, but with how it is imposed on us in public spaces. So working in this industry is not a contradiction since I’m not participating in the creation of its content.

Do you know of similar initiatives in Europe?

In France they are at the forefront of this type of protest. I don’t know if this also exists in Italy.

Paola Salvatore

WVRB Radio-News From The Neighborhood

I will be a guest on Radio Provocateur this upcoming Tuesday, November 17th from 8-9pm. The program's host WVRB, broadcasts on 88.7 FM and follows a free and freeform method they explain like this...

NYC culture and personality specific radio brought with no inhibitions. Different voices for a diversified city. We're mad as hell hatters and we're not going to take it. So here's our radio. In the vast emptiness of the NYC airwaves a grassroots radio is taking hold. Intentionally free and freeform, free-speech, true freedom of speech radio.

I'm told the discussion will revolve around public space and its over commercialization in NYC. Obviously we over here at PublicAdCampaign have a lot to say on this matter and look forward to discussing the issue at length.