Maximum Participation Billboard Liberation |
By the official rules of billboards, someone pays rent on the sign for a time, and by doing so can put an image there that turns our neighborhoods into advertising supplements.
Billboard liberation suggests that our eyeballs and our neighborhoods can be reclaimed and that a billboard can be transformed from being yet another ad into an explicit critique of advertising and consumerism, or even into art.
This page introduces a further evolution of billboard liberation.
The idea is to transform a billboard from being a medium for a single message — either one purchased by an advertiser or government, or one injected by a billboard liberator — to being a medium for multiple, changing messages from anyone in the community.
Here’s the billboard we targeted. The brooding ego and well-shaven torso of the popular musician of the month. No more annoying perhaps than most other billboards, but certainly ripe for our intended improvements. “Maybe he deserves” a chance to express some of the thoughts behind that pensive expression. | |
First, we covered over the text of the ad with paint to match the preëxisting background color. Note the painters caps, coveralls, and orange vest. Not shown in the picture are a handful of orange traffic cones. For operations like this, I recommend doing it in broad daylight and looking like you’re just doing your job. A clipboard with some forms on it is another good prop. | |
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Other Links:
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snig·gle (v) — To fish for eels by thrusting a baited hook into their hiding places. |