photograph by Jason Goodrich
Last Spring public ad campaign launched the first wave against NPA and their illegal street level advertising. Read more about that project here. On Sunday, October 25th, the white-washers and artists hit the streets again. What started out as reclamation of public space quickly escalated into an all out war. NPA responded to the white-washers, buffing the newly painted canvases almost immediately after they had been painted. The artists fought back, peeling off the repetitive ads, some still dripping with wheat paste and installing their work. Many artists simply pasted their work on top of the ads themselves. Roughly 100 locations were hit, however in the process there were consequences. NPA not only had a rapid response time in re-placing their ads, but they also brought the police down directly on many of the artists. In the course of the day, 7 people were arrested and charged with vandalism. Two individuals were released approximately 3 hours. The other five artists spent Sunday evening in jail and were released just before 9pm on Monday evening. At the time of their arrest they were being charged with very serious crimes, including destruction of private property over 250 dollars (which is a felony) possession of graffiti materials, and criminal mischief. All of these arrests are in the context of a public action against an advertising company whose business practice consists entirely coating public property with illegal, non licensed advertisements. Why is this an issue?
The piece above was constructed in a pocket of relative calm in the context of the conflict of the rest of the day. The lines of text were pulled from Stephen Barber’s book, Fragments of the European City, hand lettered the week before and pasted on location. The figure was painted directly on the billboard. One of the textual fragments reads,
The cities metamorphose rapidly. Each component is dispensable and may be restructured at will at any moment- the arrangement of the city is constantly cut, impacted, expanded.
The objective of this piece was to draw parallels between the shifting surfaces of these street level advertisements and their attempts to influence our identity as we navigate through the city. This action, like the actions of all the artists on the 25th of October was a demonstration that this influence is not outside of our reach. As artists and citizens we can extend our own forms of influence. As the surfaces of our city attempt to control and shape us, we can respond in kind.
Despite the arrests, the day ended successfully with many amazing pieces of work being created by a large force of artists. The artists who were arrested have all been released at this point, and the charges against them have been greatly reduced.
View more of the projects from this round here
and at Public Ad Campaign
Photographs graciously taken by Jason Goodrich
