Bringing Gaza to Philadelphia

Art by Paola Delfín, based on an image by Belal Khaled (Gaza - November 12, 2023). Photo by Luna Park.

For three months, the citizens of Gaza have been under constant siege and assault by the Israeli government. The Israeli military (with the steadfast support of the United States) has targeted schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. Of the 20,000+ Palestinians who have been killed, it is estimated that more than half are women and children. Add to that the forced displacement of most of Gaza’s residents, thousands of houses destroyed, and food and water supplies cut off, and it feels impossible to measure the physical and mental harm being inflicted on Gazan civilians right now.

For those of us living far from the bombings and blockades, it might feel easier to tune it all out or to focus on a single defining moment, like Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel. Major American media outlets seem to favor that approach. But as Jordan Seiler told us back in 2021, “We deserve a public environment that nurtures our minds and challenges our hearts.” That’s where artists can come in.

Art by Escif, based on an image by Mahmoud Bassam (Gaza - October 21, 2023). Photo by Luna Park.

Unmute Gaza is a campaign that brings photographers in Gaza together with artists and activists to humanize the people of Gaza, share the crisis unfolding there, and declare a refusal to remain silent on this issue. Dozens of artists and photographers have collaborated on posters. Unmute Gaza makes the posters available for free download on their website, and the images have been appearing on streets worldwide.

Art by Daniel Muñoz, based on an image by Sameh Rahmi (Gaza - October 26, 2023). Photo by Luna Park.

We decided to wrap up the Art in Ad Places campaign in 2021, when New York City’s payphones became too scarce to keep installing ad takeovers in them. Unmute Gaza has inspired us to pull out our high-vis vests for the first time in nearly three years. With no payphones left in New York City, we headed to Philadelphia, which still has plenty of analog advertising infrastructure. Let’s not say that Art in Ad Places is back, but we are honored to be returning from semi-retirement to install a selection of Unmute Gaza’s posters.

Thanks to Saki Waki for installation assistance. Photo by Luna Park.

These five posters began as real scenes from Gaza captured by photojournalists on the ground, which have been interpreted by artists working outside of Gaza. The photographers are Belal Khaled, Sameh Rahmi, and Mahmoud Bassam, and the artists are Paola Delfín, Faith47, Daniel Muñoz, Escif, and Incendiaria Libertad. For the most part, these posters capture the human moments of everyday Gazans trying to survive the consequences of the Israeli occupation and military campaign.

Art by Faith47, based on an image by Mahmoud Bassam (Gaza - October 17, 2023). Photo by Luna Park.

Unmute Gaza pushes back against decades of media bias that dehumanizes Palestinian people in the eyes of Western audiences. Despite how we have been conditioned, we hope you don’t turn away from these images.

Art by Incendiaria Libertad, based on an image by Belal Khaled (Gaza - October 19, 2023). Photo by Luna Park.

Art in Ad Places at London's The Other Art Fair

20/20 Graphic Identity by Claire Mason

In early 2020, Art in Ad Places’ photographer Luna Park was invited by curators Aida Wilde & Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski to submit work to their 20/20 A Brief Survey exhibition, initially planned to show at The Other Art Fair in London in March 2020. Thanks to the onset of the global pandemic, the exhibition was postponed… until now! We’re delighted that the exhibition will finally go on view this week as part of The Other Art Fair at London’s Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane from October 14-17, 2021.

20/20 A Brief Survey is a multidisciplinary showing of 40 international artists, with work representing the fields of painting, photography, textiles, printmaking, video, sound, sculpture, graphic design and illustration. For her contribution, Luna Park will present photographs of a selection of works installed by Art in Ad Places in 2017, the project’s inaugural year. Some of the last remaining copies of our Art in Ad Places: 52 Weeks of Public Art Across New York City zine will also be available for sale at the fair.

If you’re in London, we strongly encourage you to get your tickets for the fair, especially as Aida & Ego have a full slate of interactive programming lined up for the duration of the fair, including Friday night DJ sets, a dildo decorating workshop, a meditative sound bath experience, and more. Visit here for more on all the 20/20 A Brief Survey programming and information on all the incredible participating artists.

Participating Artists: Stacy Sowinski, See Red Women’s Workshop, Sayge Carroll, Sarah Joy Ford, Sarah Boris, Rita Keegan, Remi Rana Allen, Rebecca Strickson, Rebecca Bellantoni, Peter R.Key, p1xels, Margo Van Rooyen, Maria M. Kheirkhah, Marylou Faure, Luna Park [Art In Ad Places], Lenthall Road Workshop/ Ingrid Pollard, Keegan Xavi, Katarzyna Perlak, Juliette Stuart, Jo Peel, Joanna Layla, Jheni Arboine, Jenny Lewis, Jemisha Maadhavji, Jasmine Mansbridge, Geraldine Walsh, Felicity Taylor , E. Raelene Ash, Elizabeth Power, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Dominique Z. Barron, Delphine Parot, Delphine Noiztoy, Claire Mason, Cathy Tabbakh, Annie Attridge, Amoke Kubat, Ain Bailey, Aida Wilde, Adele Brydges

Still Not Fine

Photo by Luna Park.

Nearly three and a half years ago, we closed out the first year of Art in Ad Places (which was really all we intended for this project to be, when we first conceived it) with a message from FAUST. Borrowing from Oscar Wilde, FAUST reminded us, “Everything is going to be fine in the end. If it's not fine it's not the end.”

Things are still not fine: The steady rise of surveillance capitalism continues, exemplified on city streets where out-of-home advertising is increasingly digital and “smart” (aka, spying on you).

Nonetheless, this appears to be an end. In a matter of weeks, there will be few (if any) pay phones left in New York City. We have taken Art in Ad Places as far as it should go: A dozen curators, 117 artists, and 152 different artworks installed over four and a half years.

David Graeber said it best: “Direct action is, ultimately, the defiant insistence on acting as if one is already free.” With Art in Ad Places, we have tried to live that idea. As Hank Willis Thomas told us, Art in Ad Places came about “because ads are in art places.”

But an end is not the end. We still believe in defiantly insisting that we are already free, and that ads are showing up in art places. And so, we decided to take this last opportunity to bring things full circle.

Without Jordan Seiler, there would be no Art in Ad Places. Jordan has been involved in the “ad takeover” community for more than 20 years. His projects, like installing his own work in ad spaces for two decades or mass takeovers like NYSAT, paved the way for Art in Ad Places. Jordan was one of our inspirations, as well as a trusted advisor along the way. And so we are wrapping things up on a very long-overdue installation from Jordan: Titan Smash.

Titan Smash by Jordan Seiler. Photo by Luna Park.

Jordan (the one who first suggested that we get statements from all of our participating artists) told us:

Why work with Art in Ad Places to illegally reappropriate public space from outdoor advertising?

Because commercial media in public space is extractive and predatory.

Because pursuing our collective interests requires having space for a collective voice.

Because we deserve a public environment that nurtures our minds and challenges our hearts.

Because when all is said and done, there is no fucking spoon, only the reality that we make for ourselves, and Art in Ad Places knows it.

Titan Smash by Jordan Seiler. Photo by Luna Park.

We are honored to work with our close friend. However, Art in Ad Places has also been a reaction to what Jordan and others before us had done. Jordan insisted that everyone get their hands dirty and do their own ad takeovers. We told artists that we would do the risky bit for them. Projects like NYSAT and Brandalism saw dozens of artists taking to the streets for one day and then fading away the next. We chose to trickle out slow and steady updates over a sustained campaign. We stuck to payphones, because we thought the argument against their advertisements was the easiest to make. We tried a different approach, reacting to what we thought was missing on the streets. Now it’s someone else’s turn to react.

And so there’s another reason to end with Jordan: This is a call out to anyone who has seen Art in Ad Places and thought, “Maybe I should try this, but I’d do it my way." If this project resonated with you, or Jordan’s words resonate with you (or David’s, or FAUST’s), we hope that you’ll pick up a high-vis vest and whatever other tools you need to get your message out there. The world needs people to keep fucking with public space, especially with advertising. This end of Art in Ad Places is really just us stepping aside at a natural pause point, asking who’s got next.

Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk.

The Serendipity Of It All

Izzi. Photo by Luna Park.

With pay phones rapidly disappearing from NYC streets, the inevitable end to Art in Ad Places will soon be upon us. We’d intended to install this ad takeover at another location, but upon arriving at the scene, we found not a pay phone, but two telltale, yellow squares on the sidewalk indicating a LinkNYC terminal yet to come.

Not one to be easily deterred, photographer Luna Park had an ace location up her sleeve. As luck would have it - and serendipity often comes into play for those active on the streets - she happened to walk past a pay phone we’d taken over with Jess X. Snow last December. The pay phone was oddly pristine, free from both ads and the graffiti with which most of the remaining pay phones have been covered in the last year. It was meant to be. Luna writes,

I have documented hundreds of ad takeovers in NYC pay phones in my tenure as a street photographer. On a certain level, it is unfathomable to me that pay phones are now almost entirely gone, even though the last time I seriously relied on one for communication was over 20 years ago. For the past 5 years, I obsessively scanned the NYC horizon for suitable pay phones, compulsively noting locations, angles and light conditions. I absorbed a not insignificant amount of pay phone arcana (shout out Public Ad Campaign and Payphone Project). In their decline, pay phones came to inhabit a strange, liminal space on the street: omnipresent yet invisible, portals to a not too distant, pre-digital past. It’s been my great joy to facilitate removing ads and injecting art into these places. I learned individuals can make a change in their environment if they care enough and just do it. Please forgive us for not having asked permission. While Art in Ad Places has been a platform for many and diverse voices, from the serious to the absurd to the sublime, one thing has been missing all along: cats. So I give you my little cat Izzi, staring you down from across the street, demanding attention as always. So long and thanks for all the fish.

Coney, Rainy Afternoon

Swoon. Photo by Luna Park.

Coney Island has a century-long history that mixes highbrow and lowbrow, relaxation and thrills, an escape from the city and a home to tens of thousands. It’s the beach that you can take the subway to. Coney Island is decidedly not The Hamptons. Artist Steve Powers once called it “the most beautiful place in New York City.”

We feel similarly, and for years we have had our eye on a particular payphone there. It’s a real dream spot, right at that main intersection where New Yorkers hop off the subway and enter the free-wheeling chaos of a neighborhood that is also a beach and also full of amusement parks. You may never have noticed the phone there, but you know the spot.

We knew that spot needed an ad takeover, but what? Who could do that spot justice? Who was going to give us that happy-go-lucky celebration of pure joy that is a summer beach day?

Enter Swoon, someone who was an early inspiration for the entire Art in Ad Places team. She told us:

I have always loved the feeling of mystery that accompanies seeing a work of art show up where it’s maybe not supposed to be. In particular the sense of confusion I sometimes feel when I see art taking over the spaces where advertising usually reigns. The tingly sense of openness and strangeness you experience trying to figure out what this could possibly be advertising, only to realize that in fact it’s pointing you to a world far outside of commerce, maybe even deep inside yourself. My piece is about grief, it’s about hell on earth. About holding on to the world by the skin of your teeth and maybe not always making it. Is it strange that this is up at Coney Island, land of fun and amusement? Not really. I’m from a beach town, I know boardwalk life, and I know that those extremes of revelry and suffering often ride together, closer neighbors than we like to admit.

This pairing of poster and location echos an installation that Swoon made about Coney Island more than 15 years ago: Coney, Early Evening. Even then, she was thinking about that relationship between revelry and suffering. Yes, Coney, Early Evening includes the roller coasters and the boardwalk, but look closer… There’s also Alison the Lacemaker front and center, working on her memento mori of a dancing skeleton. Why does a land of pure joy need a barbed wire fence? Who is the hooded figure lurking in the background? Coney Island is more than fun and games.

All that in mind, maybe Swoon’s chaotic depiction of horror and sorrow is more at home across the street from Nathan’s than just about anything else could be.