Sunday 27 May 2007


THE BILLBOARD LIBERATION FEDERATION. Art activists that thou to fight back against the mass corporation advertising machine. They fight back by liberating billboards from persecution of being used as a tool to sell products to the innocent public.

They do this by altering existing billboards. They aim to poke fun at the advert or the company, demeaning theyre advert. The billboards are not instantly recognisable as being altered but with further reading you can tell that words have been changed to obstruct and change the message of the adverts to that of something comical.







THEIR MANIFESTO The BLF Manifesto In the beginning was the Ad. The Ad was brought to the consumer by the Advertiser. Desire, self worth, self image, ambition, hope; all find their genesis in the Ad. Through the Ad and the intent of the Advertiser we form our ideas and learn the myths that make us into what we are as a people. That this method of self definition displaced the earlier methods is beyond debate. It is now clear that the Ad holds the most esteemed position in our cosmology.
  • Advertising suffuses all corners of our waking lives; it so permeates our consciousness that even our dreams are often indistinguishable from a rapid succession of TV commercials.

  • Different forms of media serve the Ad as primary conduits to the people. Entirely new media have been invented solely to streamline the process of bringing the Ad to the people.

  • Old fashioned notions about art, science and spirituality being the peak achievements and the noblest goals of the spirit of man have been dashed on the crystalline shores of Acquisition; the holy pursuit of consumer goods. All old forms and philosophies have been cleverly co-opted and re"spun" as marketing strategies and consumer campaigns by the new shamans, the Ad men.

  • Spiritualism, literature and the physical arts: painting, sculpture, music and dance are by and large produced, packaged and consumed in the same fashion as a new car. Product contents, dictated by trends in hipness, contain a half-life matching the producers calender for being supplanted by newer models.

  • Product placement in television and film have overtaken story line, character development and other dated strategies in importance in the agendas of the filmmakers. The directors commanding the biggest budgets have more often than not cut their teeth on TV Ads & music videos.

  • Artists are judged and rewarded on the basis of their relative standing in the ongoing commodification of art objects. Bowing to fashion and the vagaries of gallery culture, these creators attempt to manufacture collectible baubles and contemporary or "period" objects that will successfully penetrate the collectors market. The most successful artists are those who can most successfully sell their art. With increasing frequency they apprentice to the Advertisers; no longer needing to falsely maintain the distinction between "Fine" & "Commercial" art.

  • And so we see, the Ad defines our world, creating both the focus on "image" and the culture of consumption that ultimately attract and inspire all individuals desirous of communicating to their fellow man in a profound fashion. It is clear that He who controls the Ad speaks with the voice of our Age.

  • You can switch off/smash/shoot/hack or in other ways avoid Television, Computers and Radio. You are not compelled to buy magazines or subscribe to newspapers. You can sic your rotweiler on door to door salesman. 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.

  • For these reasons the Billboard Liberation Front states emphatically and for all time herein 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. Until that glorious day for global communications when every man, woman and child can scream at or sing to the world in 100Pt. type from their very own rooftop; until that day we will continue to do all in our power to encourage the masses to use any means possible to commandeer the existing media and to alter it to their own design.

  • 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.

Jack Napier
John Thomas.

(http://www.billboardliberation.com/manifesto.html)

The website is setup like a corporate website. Mimicing things such as "Our Mission", " Clients", "strategic partners", "history" "corporate". The site even has mock corporate photos of people in masks that im sure ive seen in some heist film.



The website is a recruitment site for new commercial activists. They offer instructions on how to be a billboard saver with a page entitled "The art and science of billboard improvement" which gives instructions on selecting the right billboard through to specific instructions on creating the alterations and ensuring the security of yourself.



Very interesting stuff. Seems very similar in thesis as Adbusters.


Friday 25 May 2007

patrick shanahan esparantis.

These images are almost seductive with their glowing quality. The images are taken at night with a long shutter speed. This causes vivid images with the night almost glowing

This image has asense of eerieness . With the car park having a feeling of being deserted.
The photos offer an insight into european contempory urban landscape



Thursday 24 May 2007

smoke free campaign



this was a flash popup on the internet caught my eye with fast moving graphics. interesting.

pedro semeano

WAS flicking through joelys musa book while waiting for my tea to brew. theres some interesting illustrations. i particularly liked the work of pedro semeano.
His work has great similarities to david foldvaris work With the amount of whitespace, markmaking and composition.

Tuesday 22 May 2007

BARCELONA SOME STUFF




SAGRADA FAMILIA


FOUND this on the floor.


Found graphics in barcelona



These are every where in barcelona they litter the city. They are stickers adverting services in lock picking or somethin similar.


went to london this weekend went to stolen space gallery. a gallery owned by d'face a prominent street artist. Had a japanese graffiti artists exhibition on.











































walked around went to cafe 1001 sat and watched the london people go by in their brand new old clothes.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket


went to a few bookshops. one shop had an obey wall. Obey had a large mural on one of the walls in a square.Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
this square also had a piece by banksy and d'face. Banksy car that had was a pink mg midget with his stencil art on. and the other a hyundai accent( i used to have one of these:-() with D'faces circular character with wings. Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket


Also saw a pure evil exhibition very graphic drawings using sharp black and white. collected alot of graphics.

Tuesday 15 May 2007

Critical journal.(street art barcelona)

Went to barcelona last week. spent alot of time walking around alley ways, zoning in on the doorways and walls searching for stickers of distinct quality. This wasnt to hard though as it seemed that i had developed some sort of sixth sense. Sticker sense. I looked in the nooks in the crannys, up high and down low. When i came back to leeds this sixth sense seem to continue. I have started to notice more stickers, more graffiti. My memories of the my last visit to barcelona are filled with the most intricate graffiti styles, i have memories of barcelona being coveted by this graffiti and i expected this to be the same. But apparently they have started to "clean the city up" by destroying graffiti walls and replacing them with government buildings and art galleries. there was one that i found near MACBA (museu arte contemporani barcelona) My favourite pieces on thsi wall are paint splats. They dont technical skill like many of the other pieces but they challenge this. Graffiti is all about territory, with terms like bombing being attached to them. The splats take this to a different level they are like that made by paintballing. I just noticed what these colours are and the order that they are in cmyk. The printer swatch colours. Whether this is intentional or not i do not know. The stickers in barcelona were amazing makes me want to do some myself heres some photos.



Fashion chimp sticker is a faile sticker. Faile is a famous street artist with an iconic and instantly recognisable logotype.
There was alot of graffiti around barcelona but its the street art that captured my attention. street art un;ike graffiti uses traditional art techniques like printmaking, silkscreening. I think that it links more with graphic design because it uses these techniques rather than traditional graffiti that has a more painterley quality given to it. Street art has adopted mechanisms such as advertising and print based media to attack the street but blend in with the the urban landscape of endless advertising and graphic design.













Stickers allow for street artists to work on their pieces before sticking them up. They are created then stuck up. This allows for great detail and fast apllication. Quite essential in such illegal activities.