Adbusters Article-Fantastic

What I like about this article is that at by the end you know this project was part of a movement, and that gives the movement momentum. Thanks to Sarah Berman and Ji lee.

VIA AdbustersJi Lee – pleaseenjoy.com

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Last month, dozens of New York artists and activists battled the clutter of consumerism in a guerrilla-style billboard takeover. Mobilized by Jordan Seiler and the Public Ad Campaign, the 24-hour direct action replaced nearly 19,000 square feet of illegal advertising with original, anti-corporate street art.

Blueprints for the ambitious aesthetic revolution took shape years ago, when Seiler found that thousands of New York’s posters and billboards were not properly licensed. Some ads, he discovered, violated bylaws that have been on city books since the 1940s.

“Outdoor advertising is the primary obstacle to open public communications,”Seiler explains on his website, publicadcampaign.com. “Through bold acts of civil disobedience we hope to air our grievances in the court of public opinion and witness our communities regain control of the space they occupy.”

Armed with paint rollers, spray cans and video equipment, activists took to the streets on April 25th wearing florescent orange construction vests. (Covertness, it seemed, was not a top priority). The mixed brigade of culture jammers — ranging from artists and architects to software developers and bio-physicists — swiftly whitewashed 126 of the offending advertisements.

Calling themselves the Municipal Landscape Control Committee, the team turned the newly-buffed billboards into multimedia art. Across Manhattan, walls that formerly peddled electronics, designer clothes and alcohol were reclaimed in the name of peace, laughter and high-fives.

For a fleeting moment, it seemed democracy itself had burst through New York’s thick clouds of visual pollution. Instead of noisy and intrusive ads, passersby freely engaged with refreshing open-source canvasses. It was an artful and symbolic warning aimed at billboard companies that unlawfully reap profits from citizen-owned spaces.

Unsurprisingly, the artistic uprising was not without casualties. One artist, two whitewashers and a videographer were arrested by New York police — one of whom is still fighting criminal charges. And, because of the city’s utter lack of enforcement, many of the same illegal ads were replaced the very next day.

Such flagrant disregard for the quality and character of public space has been met with passionate outrage across the globe. In places like Los Angeles, Toronto and Paris, creative communities are developing new ways to investigate billboards and combat illegal advertisements.

The omnipresence of insipid "buy me" schlock isn’t exclusive to the world’s metropolises. Indeed, the battle for a clear and democratic mindscape can be fought and won at all fronts. Visit illegalsigns.ca or illegalbillboards.org and learn how you can take back the streets in your hometown.

Next Generation Google Maps Has All the Billboards Included

The next generation of Google Maps has an intricacy most of us would find unfathomable. Along with that level of detail comes all the outdoor advertising your little hearts could desire. Take a look at the corner of Lafayette and Houston street and compare it with the google map street view image below. They even have the advertising location Ji Lee made his amazing New Museum campaign on. WOW

Ji Lee, I'm Your Newest Fan

Ji Lee's work goes from creating advertising content for the likes of Cheerios and Tylenol, to deconstructing similar content with his Bubble Project. Until recently, I was only aware of the Bubble Project work and wasn't aware of the advertising he helped create. It seems more and more artists these days are traversing this slippery slope, creating incisive commentary on our consumer culture and lack of individual voice in the public, while creating ad content at the same time. I'm not so opposed to this, though fighting against advertising in the public becomes difficult when you produce public advertising as well. Luckily, the only example I've found by Mr. Lee of creating outdoor advertising content is this amazing 2008 campaign for The New Museum. This project would not have worked anywhere but outside. Not only does the New Museum Advertisement erase countless ads but it builds a visual understanding so that you see this actually happening. The new museum poster is at once the two images and yet you are reminded of what the top images has obliterated. It's a tiny stroke of genius and I wish more indicative of what the New Museum has to offer.

Bubble Project Manifesto

The Bubble Project has been taking back our streets since 2005. Today, Wooster Collective announced, "..the second book in our "Books We Love" series is Ji Lee's Talk Back: The Bubble Project which came out from Mark Batty publisher in 2006." In the posting, Wooster includes Ji Lee's Manifesto which is a very concise argument for the need for open participation in our public discourse. Very insightful.