Me and Clint Merry Xmas

  Good old Me and Clint going all out for the holidays

Supreme Angers by Defacing Street Art with ‘Blessed’ Flyposting

VIA: Bowery Boogie

Call it supreme street drama. More [HERE]

  Vermibus - In Absentia from Vermibus on Vimeo.
Vermibus just released a beautiful new video shot by the talented Xar Lee, called In Absentia. It features his fashion image abstractions in the beautiful Paris subway setting, accompanied by soothing seductive audio. It is a short and seductive look into large scale public project, and of course I also love the fact that the dramatic ending happens at Jourdain station.

He writes. "Deliberating various imposed standards, Vermibus has built a recognizable oeuvre, which culminates with his project entitled “In Absentia”. Works from the project unveil another introspective layer of Vermibus’ work, where macrocosms of consumerism intertwine with microcosms of the artist’s subjective journey into the depths of the self. The project began with the creation of 21 solvent-based posters, each of them bearing an individual inspiration and significance, hidden in the title. As a crown of the series, Vermibus produced an atmospheric video, an autonomous work of art, a clear step forward from the documentary short films he was creating to date. “In Absentia” video is a brooding visual tale about urban life, cleared of every and any distraction, including people, alluding to a plethora of issues the citizens face daily, from visual pollution to personal loneliness. Inspired by one of the biggest subway systems in Europe, the Parisian Metro, the artist installed all the posters on the scene, where the video was shot as well. Asking some of the crucial questions about present reality in the post-truth world, “In Absentia” opened a possibility to observe Vermibus’ work in broader context, surpassing the realm of public urban art."

Vermibus Website [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. 

VIA: Hyperallergic

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]

No Free Walls Documentary

A few months ago I was given the chance to comment on the visual gentrification that has been transforming Bushwick for some years for a documentary called No Free Walls that just came out. In addition to the on camera interview, I did a little phone conversation a few days ago for the Complex website. Take a look below. 

Watch the full documentary [HERE] Read the whole interview [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]

New Beastmaster work in Madrid.

Barcelona - Title: “You can stretch the truth”.

Beastmaster recently sent in these ad takeovers from Madrid and Barcelon that I really love. The production value is fantastic and his messaging is consistently interesting. I just wish he would ditch the logo. The logo thing is a pet peeve of mine because it warrants the criticism, "isn't this just an ad for yourself? and if so, what gives you the right?" While I do agree that adding a logo does make the work self promotional, I do not believe it invalidates the work. The messaging Beastmaster is putting across is in direct conflict with many of the advertisings core ideals and is a welcome replacement. Either way the work is thought provoking and well worth taking a look at [HERE]

Madrid - Title: “White Limo”.

OX IN SAINT ÉTIENNE

It looks like the amazing Marc Schiller over at Wooster Collective has begun posting again. Marc is a colleague whom I have admired for a long time and who recently suffered from some serious medical issues that I was made aware of through social media. While I didn't feel it was my place to reach out directly...Marc if you are reading this "I wish you the speediest full recovery and I am so happy to see your energy going back into the Wooster Collective. You and Sara's creation of that online venue so many years ago changed the course of public art and renewed the publics interest in our city streets. Thank you and I hope I get to see you around sooner than later." 

VIA: Wooster Collective

French street artist OX creates posters and billboards that impact public spaces in surprising ways. Since 2000, OX has placed about 300 works on billboards across the globe. He covers them with geometric or abstract compositions and mixes the styles of avant-garde movements with the world of commercial images. More [HERE]

ICY & SOT In Los Angeles

Icy and Sot were just out in LA and had a chance to put thier PublicAccess keys to good use. I love the fact that these two make it a point to do a few ad takeovers in whatever city they end up in, regardless of why they are in town. This is the kind of autonomous action I was hoping to make possible with the PublicAccess project and I hope to see more activity like it in the future. 

Street Art, The Law, Advertising, The City

I finally had the chance to read Alison Young's Street Art, Public City: Law Crime and the Urban Imagination. Its a wonderfully researched investigation into the legal barriers broken by situational art in public space and how those transgression can envision an alternative city or way of being. For me it pins a lot of the same tactics discussed in Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership by Sonia Katyal, on street and graffiti writers, which I have always felt appropriate. For anyone interested in street art and its politics beyond the image, this book is a must read.

Upon speaking to a PhD Student in London, I also found my way to a very interesting paper by Anne M. Cronin entitled "Advertising and the metabolism of the city: urban space, commodity rhythms". This paper is the first I have come across that looks beyond a textual critique of advertising in outdoor space and instead looks at the ways in which it shapes the city and its inhabitants by co-opting the rhythms of public movement. I can't recommend this short paper enough to anyone who is interested in understanding how the very presence of commercial media in public space regardless of the specific messages, can cause a change in our social behavior and link us closer to the cycles of commodity consumption. Download [HERE]

In Bushwick, Street Art Comes with a Copious Side of Advertising Billboards

Everyone asked for comment in this article, including myself have something interesting to say. On a compete side note, I wish writers would let you know that they may quote entire sections of your emails verbatim. I always assume they will integrate your ideas into a story and so often whatever grammatically deficient gibberish i spew out in an email on the plane home from Germany ends up as a quote. :)

VIA: Hyperallerigic

A Bushwick Collective mural by Joe Iurato at Troutman Street and St Nicholas Avenue with a large Coors billboard in the background. (photo by Joe Iurato, courtesy the artist)

The latest additions to the Bushwick Collective, the street art project founded and curated by Joe Ficalora around the intersection of Troutman Street and St Nicholas Avenue in Brooklyn, are a number of big, garish billboards. Since artists began transforming warehouse walls in the area with large-scale murals three years ago, there has been remarkably little infringement by the type of advertisements and hand-painted billboards that have overtaken many popular street art spots in Williamsburg and Greenpoint. But in recent weeks, as Bushwick Daily has pointed out, advertisements have begun appearing on the Bushwick Collective blocks, some of them installed directly atop existing murals. More [HERE]

The Street Art of Bushwick Collective Is Disappearing Under Billboards

This is incredibly sad article is further proof that outdoor advertising is simply incompatible with public space. I know Anya of the House of Yes through friends, and she is a nice woman who has been seduced by the money that advertising is willing to pay for outdoor space. Her folding under the pressure of money is not her fault, but our collective fault for allowing advertising to use its incredibly large resources to sway normal citizens to profit at the expense of the rest of us. If advertising was not allowed in our public spaces we would continue to enjoy Bushwick as the arts mecca that it is, instead of watch the artists efforts be subsumed under a glut of paid commercial signage. 

VIA: Bushwick Daily

Last week Frank Mattarella received an interesting phone call. Jason Medrano from Seen Outdoor Media was offering him $24,000 per year to rent a single wall on his building at 14 Wyckoff Avenue. Frank Mattarella was born in Bushwick- his family has owned the building on Wyckoff and Troutman for decades and they’ve rented it as a metal fabrication shop. His neighbors are North East Kingdom on one side and an industrial warehouse on the other. The recently painted warehouse is already sporting two billboards- a larger one with a Sprite ad, and a smaller one with an Atlantic ad. More [HERE]

New Mobstr Work in 2015

Mobstr just sent over these two new street pieces and I am of course enjoying them. The above piece in particular intrigues me as I think about the viewer who knows nothing about street art, and less about the ad takeover sub-genre that Mobstr sometimes traverses. Whose voice do they assume Mobstr's text work is speaking in, and who is it speaking to? See more of Mobstr's work [HERE]

A Conference Considers the Philosophy of Street Art

Hrag Vartanian just interviewed Nicholas Riggle about a conference at Pratt Institute finishing up this weekend with a keynote by Allison Young. I wont be able to make it, but I highly recommend making the effort to any readers who might be in New York. In the short interview, Riggle makes an amazing point that I think relates well to this blogs thesis, and my understanding of advertisings misalignment with our goals for cities and thier public spaces. 

"The street is a cultural space, one of the essential functions of which is to promote public interaction by facilitating self-expression. That’s a function that a space can have more or less, and it’s one that a space can lose." 

Thinking about what advertising does to our shared public environment in relation to this quote, it becomes pretty clear that a fully functioning public space cannot be one that includes commercial messaging. 

VIA: Hyperallergic

Today, a three-day conference titled Philosophy of Street Art: Art in and of the Street begins at Pratt Institute and New York University. Organized by Gregg Horowitz of Pratt, Nicholas Riggle of Lafayette College, and Christy Mag Uidhir of the University of Houston, the event will feature an artist panel (with Leon Reid IV, HOTTEA, ELBOW-TOE, and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh), two days of papers and discussions, and a keynote lecture by a leading authority on the topic, Alison Young of the University of Melbourne, who will speak about “Mainstreaming the Street: The Cultural Value of Illicit Street Art." Read the full interview [HERE]

The Good Cities Project, Sponsored by Ford

The GOOD cities project is a exploration of our relationship to cities through the eyes of artists, designers, and writers over the course of 5 months. One aspect of the project is a collaboration the Street Museum of Art and three street artists to produce the billboard pictured below.

Artist: Skewville

 Artist: Elle

Artist: Rubin

The GOOD Cities Project — led by Bristol Baughan, Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning filmmaker — is diving into a five-month multi-media exploration with Ford Motor Company and inviting their favorite thought leaders to create visual love letters to cities across the country. This fall, The Street Museum of Art was asked to share our unique and personal perspective of the city we live in and love through billboard takeovers in and around New York during the month of November. Focusing on found works of street art that have taken on lives of their own throughout this city, SMoA’s behind-the-scenes video and billboard designs call for the public to take an active role in the GOOD Cities Project and ‘Rediscover Our City’ through the lens of a street artist. More [HERE]

Brandalism 2014 Hits the UK Again - A Movement Grows

First, stop what you are doing and go to the Brandalism website [HERE]. Once you have visited the site, come back for my thoughts on this incredible project and the implications of a larger growing social movement with an eye on our public spaces, and the health of our communities. 

Just yesterday, the world citizens over at the Brandalism project carried out the largest advertising takeover project ever! With 40 participating artists, they took over 365 bus shelter and freestanding advertising spaces in 10 UK cities, all over the course of 2 days. This was a massive undertaking that clearly took months of planning and the dedication of a huge number of participants, not to mention the full time work of several core organizers. The sheer scale of their action demands a conversation about who our public media infrastructure is serving and how it might be better used, a sentiment we share over here at PublicAdCampaign. Instead of repeating familiar grievances in this post, we suggest you take a look at the amazing documentation and political insights gathered on the Brandalism website so we can take this opportunity to talk about what continued large scale civil disobedience means for this growing movement. 

John Fekner and Jordan Seiler
Lately, I have been amazed at the sheer number of projects and activities that are taking place around the anti-advertising movement. Brandalism in the UK and The Empty Project in Madrid continue a history of large scale civil disobedience, full scale gallery exhibitions from Vermibus, OX, BR1 and Mobstr show a growing movement of dedicated artists, activists in Australia are getting themselves arrested for a chance to challenge the status quo, urban planners in LA taking notes on how to better serve the community, undergraduate classes at our major universities are engaging the anti-advertising conversation, even our own city governments seem to be stepping up and policing our streets. All this adds up to a community trying to understand our relationship to corporate media driven public spaces, and fight for what is right. No longer does this seem like the work of a few crazy street artists. The question is what are our next steps and how do we begin to realize some of our demands in light of this growing momentum? 
The first step is to continue coordinated actions like the Brandalism project and any other public protests which help make this issue visible. Apathy towards the negative role outdoor advertising plays in our lives, along with a long tradition of public space ownership by corporate media, has made this issue difficult for people to take seriously. It is important that we remain committed to continued disruptions so that the cause remains on the forefront of our collective conscience. 
The second step is using the attention these projects get to teach larger communities about issues beyond aesthetics. Advertising has a profound effect on our collective interests, it sculpts our behaviors, and thus has direct impacts on our environment as well. This issue is about understanding how the images that surround us shape who we are. It is about reclaiming control of the public spaces that define us and in the process gaining more control over the systems which govern us. 
The third step is to pressure our local governments to act on our behalf and impose the will of the public. Most large cities have some department which is tasked with controlling outdoor advertising. in NYC it is the Department of Buildings. These departments are highly understaffed and likely not very motivated to control advertisings persistent encroachment on our shared public spaces by what seems like an apathetic public. Email your local representatives, find out who is responsible for policing advertising, and make your presence known.
The last step is to remain vigilante against false equivalencies. With a growing movement of people demanding advertising's removal from public space, outdoor advertisers will need to take drastic steps to persuade the public that they are ultimately acting in the public's interest. These will come in the form of small and large "donations" of space and random acts of altruism. There are plenty of examples of these public outreach programs masquerading as public art projects but in the end all they do is serve to concretize a public space whose visual imagery is curated by outdoor advertising corporations and the large for profit businesses that pay them to promote thier private messages. 

Mobstr Displays Unusual Agility in His Public Art Practice

Mobstr just sent over these new images and a video which can be viewed below. Mobstr's work has always delighted me because he often uses billboards as his preferred outdoor canvas. I get a special kick out of seeing work which happens over outdoor advertising regardless of the content. But Mobstr's projects are not all ad takeovers and ultimately his work is not about advertisings monopoly of public space. It seems more about the simple act of using public space to create endless opportunities for communication and engagement. Visual puns like this Apathy piece above, require the viewer to get the punchline in order to be complete, they are participatory. In fact many of Mobstr's projects involve other civic actors that help him turn public space into a bit of theatre, and we delight in its playfulness. The politics of public space usage that lies behind all of the fun in Mobstr's work is there, but bundled in a much more pleasant package. It's agile work that at its heart opens up dialogues about how we should use public space, converses with the current participants, and gives the public front row access to the show. Enjoy!

Official Re+Public 1.0 Launch

Re+Public: Moto Wall Digital Mural from The Heavy Projects on Vimeo.
To many, the PublicAdCampaign project is about the removal of outdoor advertising from our shared visual environment in an effort to "clean up" our public spaces from the mental pollution caused by outdoor advertising. While I would not argue that is one of the most important aspects of this project, it does not take into account our belief that "cleaning up" does not mean a visual environment devoid of life. To the contrary we see the removal of outdoor advertising as a vital step in the creation of a public environment that promotes public media and visual interaction. 
Some years ago, I met a guy over at the Heavy Projects and we bagan to explore the potential of AR to not only create a more democratic public media space, but also to leap over that vital step of removing outdoor ads by simply replacing them in the new digital public environment. For PublicAdCampaign this new technology gave us visions of an interactive and publicly curated media space where your ability to purchase outdoor space did not determine your ability to produce media there. It is an exciting idea that we simply had to explore. 
Over the past few years we have been working with this new medium and could not be more excited to finally launch our free Re+Public mobile app. Re+Public harnesses this new technology to glimpse at a new digital future for public space and there is much work to be done exploring these concepts further as people become more comfortable with AR and wearables become a part of our everyday lives. Until then, please download the Re+Public app, visit the site, and Like us on facebook so we can continue to explore this incredibly rich new artistic domain. 

Newest Echo Work Finally Allows the City to Show Itself

These two Echo pieces can still be seen at the Wooster 10 year anniversary show for a few more days. While the process is still the same, install, photograph, print, reinstall, repeat; I have begun to allow the city to show itself with interesting results. Not only do the characters and changing scenery allow the viewer a glimpse into my process, the whole attitude of the work changes. I am very excited to continue this project once I return from St Louis where I am currently working with MOMO on Re+Public's first ground up mural augmentation in preparation for the full application launch come Spetember 21st. Couldnt be more excited. 

How to Turn a Billboard Into a Giant Doodle Pad for the Public

tsb hd from mobstr on Vimeo. I have been wanting to put something together about Mobstr for some time now. His work, while not always over advertising, speaks to my concerns about public space as a social environment in ways other artists works simply do not. If you don't know Mobstr's work, you should give him a look, [HERE] Often, Mobstr speaks directly to you as viewer, but just as often to some other public character, the buff, the architect, the urban planner. In doing so his work doesn't only adress you individually but other actors which help shape how we see and use public space. What I love about this is that it makes you realize that we are all constantly creating and recreating our public environment, acting on it in ways which we hope changes it for the better, or more often for our personal needs. In the piece above, Mobstr brings the public directly into the conversation in a more obvious way, but again making sure you understand you are part of a greater conversation.