I’ve taken the time to revamp our much neglected MySpace profile. Despite the reservations we feel about the platform, I thought we might as well take advantage of our already existing page. So, let’s be friends!
Branding is a thing typically left to corporations with the money to invest in coordinated marketing plans, but Jerry Stifelman and Sami Grover don’t believe it ought to be that way. The Change is the name of their firm, and they are bringing brand-building services to nonprofits and “good-for-the-world” businesses.
Visitors to the company website are immediately confronted with the motto: “The truth is your best tool.” Making use of an organization’s conviction, personality, and sense of mission are key to brand-building in their view. They conceive of their free-market activism as apolitical, and feel right at home working with folks whose politics might not mesh perfectly with their own. Such a stance caught my confused eye here at Groundswell, and I invited our friend Marc from Osocio to participate in interviewing Jerry and Sami, in order to get a better picture of their work and their approach.
“Spray paint is not healthy for children and other living things” is a credo that informs the street art of Jesse Graves. Fashioning his stencils with politics and community in mind, he paints with mud, preserving the environment, human health, and his canvases at the same time. I conversed with Jesse recently about his chosen medium and the politics that inform his work.
The Billboard Liberation Front doesn’t make art. Instead, they co-opt one of the most popular advertising mediums to make ironic, and usually critical statements. They turn the advertiser’s message against itself. The resulting implosion can range from humorous to disturbingly revealing - even sometimes achieving both at once.
A 30 year old outfit, BLF was borne out of San Francisco’s Suicide Club, and have since enacted billboard liberations around the globe. Their infamy has turned them into defining figures in the world of culture jamming.
Attempting a straight face, they philosophize that “to Advertise is to Exist. To Exist is to Advertise. Our ultimate goal is nothing short of a personal and singular Billboard for each citizen.” Their mission statement holds that:
Of all the types of media used to disseminate the Ad there is only one which is entirely inescapable to all but the bedridden shut-in or the Thoreauian misanthrope. We speak, of course of the Billboard. Along with its lesser cousins, advertising posters and “bullet” outdoor graphics, the Billboard is ubiquitous and inescapable to anyone who moves through our world. Everyone knows the Billboard; the Billboard is in everyones mind.
To the public, BLF poses as a traditional advertising agency, boasting a client list that includes Apple, Exxon, Revlon, and Marlboro. Each hit is complemented with a press release to media outlets.
Most recently, BLF received significant attention for their jab at AT&T for collusion with the NSA. Video of the hit is available here.
Membership in the Billboard Liberation Front is open. Franchises can be started with each new liberation:
Each time you change the Advertising message in your own mind, whether you climb up onto the board and physically change the original copy and graphics or not, each time you improve the message, you enter in to the High Priesthood of Advertisers.
We caught up with Milton Rand Kalman, BLF’s Chief Scientist briefly via email:
Groundswell Collective: Billboard liberation rests on utilizing traditional avenues (the billboard for improvement, the media for dissemination, etc.) to subvert the powers that be. Do you focus on communicating a message, or collective expression more?
Billboard Liberation Front: I think was resonates most with our audience is expressing a collective frustration with the obsequious nature of advertising in public space. I would be hard pressed to say that we have a message beyond, “if we can do it you can too.”
GC: In the past, BLF has been the subject of gallery exhibitions. Do you consider what BLF does art?
BLF: No more than anyone would consider advertising ‘art’. We work most effectively in our improvements because over the years we have done an excellent job of using the language of marketing in our alterations. The work I think has been most effective did the least amount of alteration, and nowadays we try our best to match the colors and typeface of the existing boards so our improvement blends seamlessly. If art is a reflection of life as the artist sees it, and your life is marketing then I guess you could consider it art.
GC: BLF founding member Jack Napier has been quoted frequently as saying “Any sophomore in an advertising program understands that any product exposure at all increases unit sales.” Is that notion something the group tries to reconcile with?
BLF: No publicity is bad publicity. The BLF with less than $300 of supplies liberation a board part of a $300 million dollar ad campaign; and in turn generate an enormous amount of interest. Take for instance our ATT/NSA hit, we made boingboing, metafilter and digg, and about 150k unique visitors and over 3.1 million hits in one day, if ATT or the NSA get a few complimentary hits on their website, we are more than happy to share the love. Part of diatribe is that we have nothing against advertising or billboard, we just lack the means ourselves to put up a message of our own, so we piggyback on whatever we can find.
GC: Humor, parody and paradox are defining features of the BLF. Is that to cover your tracks, or just in keeping with the overall message?
BLF: Humor, along with lifestyle and sex are prevalent themes in advertising messages. In using the language of the advertiser its important to focus on those ideas, we’re just not good looking enough for the other two.
GC: How do you feel about the recent trend toward socially conscious design and cause marketing? Would you ever liberate a billboard for, say, an anti-poverty NGO?
BLF: We get asked this a lot, the members of the BLF have fairly diverse political backgrounds and ideas. We mostly stick to advertising for the sake of advertising just so there isn’t some overbearing argument in the nature of the message, making it too polarizing. Though we applaud recent billboard alterations with anti-war or anti-poverty messages, we do not do them, as then we would feel there would be an obligation to ‘get the message out’ over the simple join of changing a billboard for fun. We do however have a manual The Art and Science of Billboard Improvement on our website, which we encourage anyone to download and review. We do occasionally get request to do websites of that nature, to which I reply, “Congratulations, you are now a franchise of the BLF, here is the manual and if the message means that much to you, do it yourself.”
GC: You’ve done a few collaborations with Ron English. Any hope for another in the works?
BLF: We love Ron dearly, and its nice to know someone is making money off this silliness. Whenever Mssr English comes out to the West Coast we also do a hit with him, ditto goes for when we find ourselves out in NY. I would be surprised if we didn’t have one in the future but I don’t know of any planned.
All photo credits to BLF.
Peter Fuss reclaims billboards to examine and evaluate present, socially taboo subjects. He’s been a fugitive, a critic, and many other things. Chiefly a painter these days, his work comments on politics, the relationships between religion and authority, flashy religiosity, social problems, and art.
Peter was generous enough to lend us a few minutes for an interview, after putting in some hard work on his latest project - a re-imagination of the Catholic Stations of the Cross, which forces one to think twice about perceptions of criminality.
Groundswell Collective: For our readers who aren’t as familiar with your background, can you give us a brief rundown of your life up until today?
Peter Fuss: I did many different things, many of them not even worth mentioning. Now I mainly paint. I am most known for works in acrylic paint on paper which I then illegally place in urban landscape. To do that, I use billboards which are plentiful on the streets.
GC: When painting or designing an installation, do you start by thinking about the social issue first, or do you put design first?
PF: Both design and content are important in art works. To make a piece interesting, both of these must maintain equilibrium and fit well with each other. When one of them starts dominating, the piece becomes boring. I favor work of artists who are able to balance both form and content. To me, it is not only important how an artist speaks, but most of all what he/she is actually saying. I am not excited by abstract works or excessively vivid graffiti with no message. Therefore, the starting point for my work is definitely a message, idea.
GC: You work illegally and commercially. Where do you feel most at home?
PF: I set my work in the streets because this helps me show my work to people I would never be able to reach through an art gallery. Besides, street art gives me unlimited freedom. I work when I feel like and do what I want. I don’t have to agree anything with any art gallery manager. I don’t have to keep deadlines, get my ideas assessed or consult my projects. These are the main advantages of working in urban environment. Of course, I also exhibit in galleries if I am invited. The precondition though is that no one will interfere with my vision.
My exhibition of January 2007 was shut down by the police on the second day after the opening and they seized all paintings, which haven’t been returned to me to this day.
I don’t know if that is a problem in the U.S., but in recent years Poland saw many cases of interfering with works of art on display, we’ve had interventions from the police and local authorities or
pieces being withdrawn from display by scared curators. My exhibition of January 2007 was shut down by the police on the second day after the opening and they seized all paintings, which haven’t been returned to me to this day. I was prosecuted by the police for 6 months because of the contents of the billboard I illegally posted on a fence in front of the church and the public prosecutor spoke to the press of the sanctions I could face. Then they discontinued the case as they were unable to find me.
GC: Over the past few years, you’ve worked outside of Poland, both in the scope of your work, and literally, attending more events in other countries. For the Laugh of God debuted in London, for example. What brought about the shift for you, and has it changed the way you work?
PF: Freedom to travel and taking part in events in various countries is nothing extraordinary in today’s world. I’ve lived in different places and all experiences I had surely influenced me, to a varied degree of course. But it is not a question of place where I live or interacting with different people and cultures that is decisive of the subject matter of my work – it is rather the times we live in that determines my perception of this world. The fact that Americans elected Bush has a direct impact on the life of people outside the U.S. Polish soldiers die on a war started by Bush in Iraq. Thanks to the media and the Internet, photographs of Hillary Clinton crying during the primaries are seen immediately in Poland and in Texas. The fact that Hirst exhibited his diamond skull in White Cube in London was known on the same day in Los Angeles, Kiev and Sydney.
GC: Many of the installations of yours that I’ve seen are serial. Do you set out to create a series of installations, or do you let the setting determine how far you take a concept?
PF: I don’t create series just because I feel like it. The subject matter determines it. So sometimes it takes a series and sometimes one piece is sufficient.
GC: A good deal of your work deals with the Pope. Why the fixation?
PF: It is not the fixation, it is a reaction to the reality around me. I live in Poland, Pope John Paul II was a Pole and even when he was alive the scale of his worship was really grotesque, and after his death it only intensified. Right now there are about 500 monuments of the Pope in this country. You can see the Pope’s images on mugs, ballpoints, or lighters. The cult of the Pope is a very particular mixture of hillbilly, superficial faith with a large dose of kitsch and bad taste.
The Pope is worshipped and loved by masses. But to them, he is more of an idol, a superstar than a spiritual leader, as paradoxically they know very little of his teachings or Papal encyclicals.
The cult of the Pope is a very particular mixture of hillbilly, superficial faith with a large dose of kitsch and bad taste.
People prefer to have pictures showing the Pope than Jesus Christ. They are also much more sensitive over the Pope than Christ. In Poland, it would be more acceptable to caricature or make a joke on Christ rather than the Pope. The police intervened several times during my exhibition on the Pope after they were called by people that felt offended by it.
GC: What were some of your early influences?
PF: As a young boy I lived in a country that was not independent. You couldn’t travel abroad, I even remember the period when it was not possible to travel freely between cities – to do that, you needed a special permit, which was checked by the military and the police. The state-controlled television had only two channels, the press was censored and before playing a concert, every band had to have their lyrics approved by institutions which made sure that no dissent was voiced. It was not a free country. You could go to jail for criticizing those in power. You would see “graffiti” saying people wanted freedom, that those in power cheated, that TV lied. The form was unimportant – it was the message that mattered. Those people expressed their need of freedom, they fought the system by writing politically involved slogans. It was their way to manifest their views and express their dissent against the regime. And they really risked prison.
You would see “graffiti” saying people wanted freedom, that those in power cheated, that TV lied. The form was unimportant – it was the message that mattered.
Those were my first contacts with graffiti activism. It taught me to be uncompromising and believe in the sense of manifesting myself, my beliefs and ideas. It taught me that it’s important to be true to one’s beliefs and express one’s individuality and independence, even if that might cause serious repercussions to me. Therefore, when Harring painted in the subway and Basquiat fulfilled his creativity on Brooklyn walls, I had contact with completely different type of graffiti activism
GC: Can you tell us about your most recent project?
PF: My latest project is a series of 14 billboards showing the Stations of the Cross. In the Catholic tradition (more than 90% of Polish population declare being Catholics) there is this tradition of acting out the Stations of the Cross before Easter. I posted my billboards on the Good Friday at the city train stations so people going to work would see different Stations of the Cross posted on successive train stops. But it wasn’t my goal to make people more spiritual or to promote Christianity among people.
Christ was portrayed in the same way as criminals and suspects are shown in media coverage: surname abbreviated (”Jesus Ch.”) and face shown in a way so as to make it impossible to identify the person. On one hand this reflected how the media trivialize stories of individuals, but most of all I wanted to point to the fact which many people seem to forget – that Christ was a revolutionary who challenged the existing law and order.
Nowadays, people who break the rules and challenge the law and order imposed by the system are being sentenced and imprisoned, notwithstanding the fact that Christ, who also broke the rules, is worshipped.