Artist Support: The Anti-Advertising Agency
Posted on April 12, 2005
Filed Under Resources, Web Sites, Artist Support |
A recent comment left by a reader who was rather upset about the current state of street art, started me thinking. Where does political street art fit in when many of the “names” in street art (myself included) do “non-political” work?
I think for one Swoon is always upfront about her beliefs and always walks the walk, as well as JustSeeds.org and the relatively new anti-advertising agency.
From their about page:
Outdoor advertising has become unavoidable. Traditional billboards and transit shelters have cleared the way for more pervasive methods such as wrapped vehicles, sides of buildings, electronic signs, kiosks, taxis, posters, sides of buses, and more. In urban areas commercial content is placed in our sight and into our consciousness every moment we are in public space. Over time, this domination of the surroundings has become the “natural” state. Through long-term commercial saturation, it has become implicitly understood by the public that advertising has the right to own, occupy and control every inch of available space. The steady normalization of invasive advertising dulls the public’s perception of their surroundings, re-enforcing a general attitude of powerlessness toward creativity and change, thus a cycle develops enabling advertisers to slowly and consistently increase the saturation of advertising with little or no public outcry.The Anti-Advertising Agency co-opts the tools and structures used by the advertising and public relations industries. Our work calls into question the purpose and affects of advertising in public space. Through constructive parody and gentle humor our Agency’s campaigns will ask passers by to critically consider the role and strategies of today’s marketing media as well as alternatives for the public arena. Our work will de-normalize “out-of-home” advertising and increase awareness of the public’s power to contribute to a more democratically-based outdoor environment.
Our work may result in traditional advertising formats – signs, posters, postcards, and stickers – or more conventional artistic formats – performance, installation, artists books – or some combination of the two.
How is this artist support? They like to work with artists of many different disciplines to bring out their message.
I’ll feature more of these types of site as I go along.
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One Response to “Artist Support: The Anti-Advertising Agency”
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Thank you for responding to my comment, especially in the form of a post.
I want to clarify a few things/feelings of mine.
I am upset about many things, and I guess it could be put that its about the “current state of street art” but more specifically its the absence of healthy dialogue and discussion. Thankfully there is one started here on a extremely useful art blog, attempting to expose useful resources and skills, thats AWESOME. I was talking to Swoon tonight about how necessary for websites, media, books, mags, etc, to provide information that educates people, who arent “artists” yet. It is sustaining the community and movement of street art/graffiti. It is much deeper than just a “look at all the pretty pictures” archive, and gives back to the walls that inspire us all to communicate, by making more “artists” so more is created!
Second, its not about doing “political” work, but realizing that what is done on the streets IS political, and contains a message. And that aspect should be talked about more!
Thank you so much for posting this and making this possible. And yeah, www.justseeds.org should totally be checked out by everyone.
Pick up Josh’s book Stencil Pirates, its a damn good collection of a variety of street stencils, with an amazing history of stencils, their uses, and content.
now comment or go make art!