Navigating (and Improving) Public Space

Stop Telling Women to Smile by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. Photo by Luna Park.

This week is International Anti-Street Harassment Week, so we thought we would do our part by installing a poster from Tatyana Fazlalizadeh's Stop Telling Women To Smile campaign. The campaign has been an inspiration to the Art in Ad Places team for years, and really gets at the heart of what AiAP is about. Here's a bit about the campaign, and this particular poster, from Fazlalizadeh:

Stop Telling Women to Smile is one piece in a series of work about gender based street harassment. This work is challenging sexism in public spaces by taking the faces and voices of women and placing them in the environment that so often is hostile and dangerous for us: the street.

Much like Stop Telling Women to Smile, AiAP is about making environments where public space can be enjoyed, rather than endured. No person should have to face cat-calling and other street harassment, or be subjected to advertisements that create and exploit low self esteem. Fazlalizadeh hits the nail on the head, saying "Art in Ad Places is important for work like this because it replaces the sometimes damaging images from advertisers with artwork by artists and activists that can provide beauty and solace for passersby."

If you want to get involved in the Stop Telling Women to Smile campaign yourself, you can: Friday night is Stop Telling Women to Smile's 4th annual International Wheatpasting Night. Have fun and stay safe!

And, as always, if you want to get involved in ad takeovers, you can visit our recently-updated Take Action page for info on how to get started.

We All See, Because It's Obvious, That Pay Phone Ads Make No Sense

I will never sin again by Tina Lugo. Photo by Luna Park.

Funny story about this week's installation of Tina Lugo's I will never sin again. During the installation, a passerby approached and laughed that the pay phones ads were still being changed, and that there are even still pay phones in New York City. In the middle of an installation wasn't really the time to get into this discussion, but those two things are connected in a way that makes only a twisted kind of sense.

Once upon on a time, pay phones served an important public function, and perhaps it made sense to subsidize their installation and maintenance with advertising (although we would debate even that point). Right or wrong, that's the decision that New York City (and other cities) made. Today though, pay phones do little to serve the public good, except maybe as shelters for lighting cigarettes in the wind or rain. Not quite the same public service that they once provided. But we still let advertisers use them to pollute our streets. The calculus has changed, but the ads live on, providing little to no public benefit. So why the hell do we, as New Yorkers, put up with them?

There's no good answer, which that passerby knew. Even if he might not have ever thought deeply about it, the truth is obvious. And that's part of why we're doing what we're doing with Art in Ad Places.

But we've gotten off track of this particular installation. Tina's work is about the messages we send in public space. Rather than filling our streets with messages selling Hollywood blockbusters and new cars, we could send out a more inspiring message. Here's what Tina had to say about her work:

"I use art as a way to reach people and talk about difficult subjects. Maybe it will elicit a feeling you can’t quite put into words. Maybe it brings up a taboo topic. That's what I want to ignite. I chose something that could be visually striking to look at, but it isn’t until you look past the bright colors that a darker turn of events takes place. I participated in this project because I am a born and raised Bronxite and it meant a lot to me to have that outer borough visibility, and hopefully show the youth in my old stomping grounds that art isn’t a 'dead-end job', and can take you from one stop on the 6 train, all the way around the world."

I will never sin again by Tina Lugo. Photo by Luna Park.

#SubvertTheCity with John Fekner

My Ad is No Ad by John Fekner. Photo by Luna Park. Daylight shot.

Before ad takeovers were a thing, before street art was a thing, before graffiti was a thing... there was simply a man who painted messages in the street: John Fekner. Since 1968, John has been stenciling messages, and painting other things, outdoors. He is a street art pioneer. For Art in Ad Places, we asked John to recreate one of his most iconic works, his MY AD IS NO AD billboard from 1980.

John gave us a photo of the original billboard, making this a somewhat meta installation of a photo of a long-gone ad takeover. And because John's poster is backlit, it changes throughout the day, looking totally different during daylight, at dusk, or after dark.

My Ad is No Ad by John Fekner. Photo by Luna Park. Dusk shot.

John says, "I decided to contribute to the Art in Ad Places project because there continues to be an incessant plethora of corporate visual glut that prevails wherever there is available and highly visible public space. Every community, both large and small, needs to not see, listen or be persuaded by corporate media's tactical junk-peddler onslaught. Don’t allow your mind to be their gold mine."

That last line of John's is worth noting, because a variation of it appeared somewhere else this week: An ad takeover installed as part of Subvertisers International's #SubvertTheCity campaign, an anti-advertising call to action taking place this week around the world. We at Art in Ad Places are big fans of Subvertisers International, and we timed the installation of John's poster so that it would go up in solidarity with #SubvertTheCity. By connecting an ad takeover from 1980 to Art in Ad Places, and Art in Ad Places to other anti-advertising actions taking places independently in cities internationally, we hope to highlight both the history of this movement and its continued growth today. And remember: you can always join in too.

My Ad is No Ad by John Fekner. Photo by Luna Park. Night shot.

#NoBanNoWall

Our Ancestors Dreamed of Us by Jess X. Snow, in collaboration with Jordan Alam. Photo by Luna Park.

"Our ancestors dreamed of us, and then bent reality to create us." – Walidah Imarisha

In case you've not been keeping up with the news... The latest version of Trump's Muslim ban was due to go into effect this week (until it was blocked by two judges), and his proposed federal budget includes billions of dollars to build the US/Mexico border wall.

This week's installation comes from queer migrant artist Jess X. Snow, in solidarity and collaboration with queer Muslim activist Jordan Alam. Jess says that the work was made "in response to the recent anti-immigrant executive orders and as a love letter to the Muslim immigrant community." Jordan expands on that thought:

"'To Allah we belong and to Allah we return' is a rough translation of the dua said at someone’s death. Blessed is this temporary cycle. We are part of a long lineage, a history of others who have dreamed us into being (as Walidah Imarisha puts it in the introduction to Octavia’s Brood). We are ourselves complete and also part of this larger whole and while we are impermanent, we are irreplaceable. Remember that you have the hands of ancestors at your back, and the duty to dream of the generations ahead of you."

Our Ancestors Dreamed of Us by Jess X. Snow, in collaboration with Jordan Alam. Photo by Luna Park.

We hope this poster is a source of encouragement and inspiration for communities who are under attack right now, and reminds everyone in the country we are largely a nation of immigrants, striving to create better opportunities for every future generation.

PS, Jess and Jordan have made a digital download of this poster (and another in the same series) available for free through Justseeds, so that anyone can download, print, and install it themselves. That may come in handy for Subvertising International's #SubvertTheCity campaign, a global call to action to against advertising and consumerism in public space. You can take part next week, March 22nd-25th, in any number of ways: Ad takeovers, lectures, workshops, calling your elected officials... Learn more about SI and #SubvertTheCity through PublicAdCampaign.

Two-for-One with Jon Burgerman

Poster by Jon Burgerman. Photo by Luna Park.

As Jon Burgerman likes to say, "It's great to create." With that attitude, it should come as surprise that Jon created not one, but two posters for Art in Ad Places!

Lately, Caroline has been thinking about how advertisements get people in a mode of not looking. Rather than experiencing public space, we put our heads down (or into our phone screens) to avoiding looking, ignoring all the beauty (and the ads) that surround us.

Poster by Jon Burgerman. Photo by Luna Park.

Jon's work speaks to that possibility of experiencing public space innocently, and finding beauty there. Here's what Jon has to say about his Art in Ad Places posters:

I fully support the idea to disrupt the onslaught of commercial images that swamp our cities and shared environments. I wanted to share work with no slogans, mottos, tag lines or credits. Just an intriguing image.

The pieces I chose are from a series of tiny sculptures I’ve been making, initially based on people, unknown to me, who i’ve seen in and around New York. I hoped the pieces would make people wonder who or what these things are, and perhaps find familiarity with the children’s modelling material that they are made out of. Maybe they will spark curiosity and joy and go someway to remind us that we were all once children, children who would play without any reason for doing so, and how wonderful that can be.