The Art of Culture Jamming at the Anti Advertising Salon

Last Thursday we attended the Anti-Advertising Salon at MEET hosted by Marc and Sara Schiller of the Wooster Collective. The evening served as a thought provoking expose on “billboard liberations” and the motivations of their creators. The discussion featured Jordan Seiler of the Public Ad Campaign, who most recently orchestrated the NY Street Advertising Takeover; and Steve Lambert of the Anti-Advertising Agency, which is perhaps best known for its collaboration with eyebeam (Firefox plugin Add-Art) and the Graffiti Research Lab (an ad-jamming campaign entitled Light Criticism).

Marc and Sara started off the evening sharing their motivations on the event, expressing their desire to bring together a variety of individuals across the art / advertising divide to inspire creativity via mutual intellectual agitation. Sara shared her own personal gains in living in the “gray area” between her work as a marketing professional and her vital connection to the art pouring out of the city. Marc expressed how street art often challenged and elevated his work; proclaiming that “if Banksy was an ad man he would easily be a billionaire”.

The two shared the practices of various artists; from those who are motivated by injecting life and curiosity into the city, to those whose works challenge the place of advertising in social spaces, to even those who question the effectiveness of ads and work to re-imagine and re-invent how they might be used.

Keith Harring’s practice started with painting in vacant subway ad spaces, spaces that would be dead otherwise. Following this spirit of adding color and interest to the city are artists like the cut up collective which remixes billboards into art made up of cut up images.

Marc on the dog dies muses, “does the billboard and its repetition of imagery grab more attention, or does the graffiti?”

Dr Gekko’s, and Decapitator’s body of work seem to ask “if the average person doesn’t even notice a change made in an ad how are they useful at all?”

Ron English and AM I Dead Yet’s works subvert the intended messages to demonstrate the negative social impact of the products and brands being promoted.

Ji Lee’s work on The Bubble Project and Ryan’s Clear Channel challenge the traditional use of billboard advertisements by injecting interactivity and allowing the city’s inhabitants a chance to express their voice.

Next, Jordan Seiler gave an overview of his career as a street artist motivated by reclaiming public spaces to his new found practice of doing this legally. Certain companies around New York are operating unlicensed advertising spaces and are making money off of them while authority figures either choose to look the other way, or worse, take bribes. Even in the off case where these companies and their employees are caught, the profit of the billboard ad placement well compensates for the penalties levied against them. Just at the end of April last month, Jordan along with 40 other volunteers orchestrated the NY Street Advertising Takeover – a whitewashing of 120 illegal billboards in New York between 30^th street and Canal.

Jordan’s early work took shape inside subway stops. This piece is not his, but shares similar motivations to his work. Jordan likens the subway to a billboard pen—the environment is enclosed and suffocating and you have no choice but to look at a billboard even if you don’t want to.

The scope of this ambitious project can be viewed on Jordan’s site, the public ad campaign, through a Google map of the all the targeted locations.

Finally, Steve Lambert, who started his presentation off with a disclaimer of his anarchist persuasion, gave an engaging presentation on what he believes to the culturally corruptive and anti-natural effects of advertising. Steve posits that advertising was used at the onset of the industrial revolution to augment the natural law of supply and demand. More products were being produced, thus brands begun advertising to inflate demand, bringing an artificial balance to match the increased supply.

The presentations left us feeling challenged by what brands could be doing better to be less intrusive, more relational, and provide better service through their communication with customers. Also, we wondered how it came to pass that our experience of place had become so influenced and filtered by the brands and corporations inhabiting the city and how this could be different.

- Contributed by Ruben Sun