Ad break
May 24th, 2004A Real Video short about subvertisers in the UK, featuring the usual tedious trust fund-wasters going round graffiting billboards with a message of their choice. Of interest is the totally indiscriminate way they attack any billboard they like, including those of the mutually-owned Nationwide building society and Unison, the public sector union, which is not exactly in line with their (supposed) anti-corporate ethos. For all the talk (amongst the pseudo-political bollocks) of striking a blow for the people and getting one over The Man, the video makes them look like just like a bunch of attention seekers doing everything they can to be seen and noticed. If they really hated advertising, why not just destroy the hoardings?
Graffiti can (sometimes) be diverting and funny, as well as an interesting art form, but trying to marry it to some sort of political act, claiming they’re revealing “the truth” and “planting a seed of consciousness” turns it an act of self-interested spatial vandalism, just like what the advertisers they so despise are doing.
(via Submit Response)
May 25th, 2004 at 12:30:46
I agree that graffiti can be an interesting art form; across the road from my house there is a bus shelter with four clear-plastic panels facing the road, and a while ago somebody had done a different spray graffito on each panel. It reminded me of Chinese or Japanese calligraphy on a screen; I rather liked it there, although it’s sad when beautiful buildings or monuments are defaced.