The California Department of Corrections (CDC) has unveiled a new campaign of bus shelter ads to confront America’s home foreclosure crisis.

During the week of January 16th, the CDC successfully apprehended, rehabilitated and discharged more than one dozen bus shelter advertisements throughout San Francisco, including the intersection of California and Davis Street, one block from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The CDC’s red, white and blue advertisements declare: MORTGAGE IN TROUBLE? OCCUPY THE BANKS along with the website, www.OccupyWallStWest.org. Produced with the assistance of the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the corrected advertisements feature the rooftop of an American home set against clear blue skies with the phrase: Making Home Affordable.

The corrected ads were released shortly prior to January 20th in anticipation of a day-long, nonviolent shut down of San Francisco’s Financial District by Occupy SF. January 20th also marks the one year anniversary of the controversial Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which granted First Amendment protection to corporate political expenditures. Occupy protestors are demanding a halt to predatory foreclosures and evictions by banks and the end of corporate personhood. They will be taking their demands directly to the offices of banks and corporations in San Francisco to stop business as usual on January 20th.

The rehabilitated advertisements are currently at liberty and seem to have successfully readjusted to public life. However, these ads will remain under surveillance by department staff to prevent recidivism and any potential lapse into prior criminal behavior.

Founded in 1994, the CDC is a private correctional facility that protects the public through the secure management, discipline, and rehabilitation of California’s advertising. The department was initiated by individuals who felt that public correctional facilities were insufficiently managing the state’s most criminal elements and that effective care and treatment would improve under the supervision of a private institution.

For more information on the operations and programs of the CDC, contact the California Department of Corrections Office of Communications at cdc@revolutionist.com.

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2. Consumer Reports: California considers ads on car license plates
3. NYT vs. SF Examiner on illegal storefront billboards

Over a year ago I interviewed for this documentary about visual pollution. In my research as an artist over the past 12 years I have learned more than most would ever care to about public space, graffiti laws, the advertising industry, and the ugly underside of marketing. I haven’t seen this film yet, but I’m glad to see the message making it’s way out with voices from within and without the industry.

It premieres at IFC Center in New York next week on November 5th.

About the “This Space Available” Film

Trailer

Click here to view the embedded video.

Clips

Steve Lambert talking about an illegal billboard

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jordan Seiler organizing the whitewashing of illegal ads

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jordan Seiler

Click here to view the embedded video.

Related posts:

1. Public Ad Campaign: This Space Available – DOC NYC World Premier at the IFC Theater
2. Buenos Aires to Remove 40 Thousand Billboards to Fight Visual Pollution
3. James Howard Kunstler on Public Space

PublicAdCampaign is proud to announce the world premier of the documentary film This Space Available. This full length feature focuses on the issue of visual pollution in our global community. Intent on creating a critical dialogue on the issue, the film investigates a wide range of perspectives including those of billboard executives, government agencies, and public space activists like myself. While the film will eventually be widely available, DOC NYC will be premiering the film on Saturday November 5th at 7pm at the IFC theater in New York City. There will also be a Q&A after the screening for viewers to question the film makers and a few of the subjects. We hope to see you there.

To purchase tickets for the This Space Available premier at the DOC NYC fest at the IFC theater on 11-05-11, please visit the DOC NYC website [HERE]. Remember there is limited space available so get your tickets now before they are all gone.

The grassroots movement against visual pollution

A documentary film directed by

Gwenaelle Gobe

Executive Producer: Marc Gobe/Emotional Branding

World Premiere at IFC Center/ New York

Saturday November 5th Time: 7:00 PM

Tuesday November 8th Time: 1:15 PM

via Public Ad Campaign: This Space Available – DOC NYC World Premier at the IFC Theater.

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2. Public Ad Campaign: Situationist Methodology Still Sits Well With Me
3. James Howard Kunstler on Public Space

Details:

Saturday October 15th from 4pm-7pm (demos start about 5pm) In the Studio for Urban Projects. 3579 17th street (at Dolores) San Francisco

The launch will feature several demos, including ‘how to make and use wheat paste to put up posters’, a demo from the Center for Tactical Magic, and more!

Destructables is a sort of online anarchist cookbook without the weapons and with a lot more art and humor. The site features user-generated, step-by-step instructions for performing a wide range of public actions, such as: shop-dropping (putting fake products in stores), protest strategies, wheat-pasting, making protest props, interventions, methods of civil disobedience, and many other forms of dissent. The projects range from the practical and tactical to the creative and illegal. We wanted to put these tools and resources into one convenient place. To make a living archive and resource for the art and activist communities where people can share what they’ve learned. The site already includes contributions from high profile groups the Yes Men, Crimethinc, and the Center for Tactical Magic.

Destructables.org was made possible through the generous support of Southern Exposure, Di Rosa and through tactical support from Crimethinc, and the Center for Creative Activism. Thanks to the Studio for Urban Projects.

Hope you can stop by!

Related posts:

1. StopDrugAds.org
2. IllegalBillboards.org
3. Packard Jennings in NYT

Pixel Hacking – Decorando la publicidad

If you missed the previous rounds, check em out here:

1. Abstractor.tv – Ji Lee
2. Light Criticism – Anti-Advertising Agency and Graffiti Research Lab
3. Pixelator – Jason Eppink
4. Hold Fast Sell Out – Posterchild
5. Stained Glass – Posterchild

And of course Aram Bartholl had a roll in the lineage.

Related posts:

1. Subway HD Screens: Round 4
2. Subway HD Screens: Round 5
3. Pixelator

via Ban Billboard Blight.

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1. Sáo Paulo Bans Outdoor Advertising in 2007
2. Public/Private Partnerships: Will Commercialization Save Our City Parks? | Ban Billboard Blight
3. Movement Happening on Illegal Signs

I’m raising funds on a new project. Get involved!

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2. Public Ad Campaign: Newest PAC Work
3. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

This post was submitted by Uppity Bike Commuters.

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1. Sign Companies, Property Owners, Advertising Agencies, Major Corporations Thumb Their Noses at L.A.’s New Off-Site Sign Ban

A David Shrigley piece just sent to me from my friend Christina Kral.

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1. David Lynch on Product Placement

A great post over at Ban Billboard Blight about the move to allow advertising in Los Angeles Public Parks.

Public/Private partnerships. At last week’s meeting of the L.A. City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee, the term kept bobbing like a life preserver grasped for by city agencies at risk of being drowned in a violent tide of red ink. Councilman Bill Rosendahl, speaking of the Recreation and Parks department, said that in the absence of such partnerships “we’re not going to be able to sustain our parks, it’s as simple as that.” The other committee members who spoke–Paul Koretz, Greig Smith, and Chairman Bernard Parks–all nodded assent to Rosendahl’s declaration, apparently feeling no need to examine either its truth or its implications for the city’s future.

That’s too bad, because Rosendahl’s statement amounts to embrace of the idea that a large, modern, wealthy city will have to go hat in hand to corporate boardrooms in order to provide one of the most public and democratic–and many would say, essential–services to its citizens. In the picture painted by the silver tongue of Barry Sanders, the retired corporate lawyer and president of the Recreation and Parks Commission, this means some signs in the parks thanking Wells Fargo and Ralph’s and Taco Bell and whomever else rides to the rescue. “In my view, thanking a sponsor is not blight,” Sanders said. “A closed swimming pool on Monday is blight.”

…read the rest! Public/Private Partnerships: Will Commercialization Save Our City Parks? | Ban Billboard Blight.

Related posts:

1. L.A. Council Members Endorse Plan To Sell Advertising In City Parks
2. Why It Matters (from Ban Billboard Blight)
3. Oakland’s Ban on “Visual Blight” Upheld in Court