On the morning Saturday, April 25th 30 individuals armed with white paint and rollers traversed Manhattan and sections of Brooklyn in vans. By 3:00 they had whitewashed approximately 130 billboards around the city. Prior to this, these locations held illegal advertisements and billboards placed there without permits and in violation of advertising regulations as articulated by the New York City Department of Buildings. After the white washers had completed their work, over 50 New York artists descended on the spaces and put up their work in place of the advertisements. By the end of the day, the spaces had been filled with original artwork. The project was coordinated and organized by artist and activist Jordan Seiler of publicadcampaign.com, who targeted street level illegal street level advertisements. The majority of the advertisements were placed by a company called NPA City Outdoor whose business practice is centered on the promotion and installation of large-scale illegal advertising or what they have termed “Wildposting” across major metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The concept of the project was elegantly simple. Instead of allowing these spaces to be illegally used by corporate and private interests they should be open for use to the public. The works of art that replaced the advertisements serve as a literal act of protest against the domiation of public visual space by marketing material and as a symbolic gesture of the potential these areas have to act as spaces that promote creative expression and community engagement.
This piece was located at the intersection of Elizabeth street and Spring street in Manhattan. All of the illustrations were rendered from sketches of actual of people I had observed walking by the billboard one week earlier. The entire piece took approximately 4.5 hours to complete and was done with the assistance of my friend and fellow artist Elizabeth Knafo. One week later I returned to the location and put up a second, smaller piece:
The complete photo set of all artists who participated is available here
view the map of all the locations here
Read my paper on the subject
