The Anti-Advertising Agency » art

On the difference between art and advertising

Steve Lambert — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:09:50 +0000

…even a really beautiful, ingenious, powerful ad (of which there are a lot) can never be any kind of real art: an ad has no status as gift, i.e. it’s never really for the person it’s directed at.

David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

And poached in this really amazing essay from Harper’s “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” by Jonathan Lethem which you should read immediately.

PosterChild Tells NPA What He Thinks Of Their Contest Promotions

Steve Lambert — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:56:26 +0000

via Public Ad Campaign

Yesterday I went out with PosterChild, Jason Eppink, Steve Lambert, and Packard Jennings for lunch. Our talk inevitably surrounded upcoming personal projects, collaborative street actions and the age of the urinals at the Old Town Bar on 18th street. Posterchild was leaving for Toronto that evening and had one last project to put up before he left. Targeting NPA Outdoor‘s pathetic attempt to convert their third party illegal advertisements into legitimate first party signs, he remade the typical sign that now adorns all NPA illegal signage in the city. This piece was made at the corner of 19th street and 10th avenue in the same location Walker Tieser was arrested during the NYSAT project.

via Public Ad Campaign: PosterChild Tells NPA What He Thinks Of Their Contest Promotions.

See what Charlie Todd at Urban Prankster thinks.

Subway HD Screens: Round 5

Steve Lambert — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:26:58 +0000

Stained Glass Post-Pixelators – Postronimos

via Posterchild’s Blade Diary

The NY Street Art Takeover Map

Steve Lambert — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:30:04 +0000

via publicadcampaign.com:

View NYSAT Project Map 04-25-2009 in a larger map

This map shows illegal/unpermitted NPA City Outdoor locations located in Lower Manhattan. All the ads together cover approximately 29,450 square feet of our public environment.

On April 25th approximately 30 participants whitewashed nearly 120 street level billboards in broad daylight between the hours of 10:30am and 2:00pm.

At proximately 3:00pm nearly 50 artists and public individuals came back and used those blank canvases for the production of public messages instead of corporate messages.

These are the results

-Yellow locations were were not a part of this project -Blue dots indicate locations that were painted white -Red dots indicate locations that recieved artwork

“Everything You Want, Right Now!”

Steve Lambert — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:32:22 +0000

Video walk through of the Los Angeles solo show…

Steve Lambert solo show walkthrough from Steve Lambert on Vimeo.

See more pics at visitsteve.com

Interview with Jordan Seiler of PublicAdCampaign.com

Steve Lambert — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:25:51 +0000

Jordan Seiler of Illegalsigns.ca’s American comrade, PublicAdCampaign.com pulled together what many could argue as one of the largest organized guerilla art campaigns in regards to illegal billboards in recent memory (perhaps ever). Doing all North American cities proud, Seiler, along with over 40 participants, white-washed illegal billboards across the city followed quickly by artwork, messages, and general visually stimulating fare to take back the public space. Space that companies, namely NPA Outdoor had obtained and utilized in complete disregard of the city’s bylaws, resulting in excessively cluttered streets.

Art from Ji Lee, Tristan Eaton, Gaia and Rachel , Aakash Nihilani, Maya Hayuk, MOMO and I AM was featured among the myriad of work south of 30th Street in Manhattan. In the midst of artist charges and show documentation, Seiler took a moment out of his busy schedule to answer our legal and art queries.

Read it all: » 120 Illegal NPA / City Outdoor Billboards Replaced with Art In New York City ::: illegalsigns

Plus Art Minus Ad

Steve Lambert — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:39:48 +0000

This video was sent on by someone who I’m not yet sure wants to remain anonymous. A simple and colorful change. Part of the massive coordinated art takeover of illegal advertising space this past weekend – which you will hear more about on this site soon…

Solo Show in Los Angeles opens 4/25

Steve Lambert — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 06:11:44 +0000

I don’t normally mention many of my projects outside of the Anti-Advertising Agency, but this one feels relevant.

I started the AAA four years ago after making my own art related to advertising and public space for the five years prior. So, after 9 years of thinking about these issues and making projects about them, I was offered a solo show. I realized I had the opportunity to make new pieces that didn’t need to be read at 25 miles an hour like much of what I’ve done in the street. And unlike what I usually put out online, I could make work that takes more than 5 seconds to be read. This show presented me a lot of freedom to play with how advertising works, why I respect and admire it, and how at the same time I despise it.

I will have photos up at visitsteve.com next week. If you can make it to the opening, please say hello.

EVERYTHING YOU WANT, RIGHT NOW! – NEW WORK BY STEVE LAMBERT

APRIL 25 TO JUNE 6, 2009

ARTIST’S RECEPTION APRIL 25, 2009 6 – 9PM

Charles James Gallery

975 Chung King Road

Los Angeles, CA 90012

New on Add-Art: Net Art 1.0

Steve Lambert — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 01:41:22 +0000

Add-Art is the Firefox addon that replaces ads on the internet with rotating curated art images. Developed by myself and several others surrounding Eyebeam over the past 2 years, it’s free, will speed up your browsing, and features contemporary art that changes every 2 weeks. We just released a new version, so install it now!

The current show (an excerpt is in the image above) is curated by Steve Dietz and features the work of Vuk Cosic, Graham Harwood, Lisa Jevbratt, Jodi, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Melinda Rackham, Vivian Selbo, and Paul Sermon.

Poster Boy; NYPD You’ve Got The Wrong Man!

Steve Lambert — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:28:50 +0000

According to the New York Times, “Poster Boy” was arrested on Saturday night.

While most other street or graffiti artists concentrate on adding their own imagery, illegally, to parts of the subway system, Poster Boy, a kind of anti-consumerist Zorro with a razor blade, a sense of humor and a talent for collage, has made his outlaw presence known all over the city by cutting and pasting the images that are already there in the form of ads.

You’ve seen his work on this site before, in New York Magazine, The New York Press, and you’ve heard more over at PublicAdCampaign as Jordan is on it and has been for weeks.

The point of the New York Times piece is that there’s a lot of questions about whether the police arrested the right person.

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said that Mr. Matyjewicz (pronounced Mat-ee-YAY-veetch), who was also being sought on a warrant for a petty larceny charge from last year, was arrested in the art space, at Broadway and Howard Street in SoHo, and charged with two misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief.

“The officers had information that he was, in fact, going to be at that gallery that night,” Mr. Browne said, adding that he believed that the department had evidence of Mr. Matyjewicz at work scrambling parts of subway posters. (Although his face is obscured, there is also plentiful video of Poster Boy doing his thing at friendswelove.com and on YouTube.)

But a man identifying himself as “Henry,” who called The New York Times on Tuesday in response to messages for Poster Boy sent through friends, cast some existential doubt on whether Mr. Matyjewicz was, in fact, the man the police were after.

“Henry is one of many individuals who believe in the Poster Boy ‘movement,’ ” the man wrote later on Tuesday in an e-mail message, referring to Mr. Matyjewicz in the third person. “Henry’s part is to do legal artwork while propagating the ideas behind Poster Boy. That’s why it was O.K. for him to take the fall the other night.”

He added, “Henry Matyjewicz is innocent.”

Moni Pineda, a co-creator and producer for Friends We Love, a New York documentary video series that profiles young artists, said that she and the series’s other creator, Mike Vargas, had just begun a benefit event in the SoHo space on Saturday evening when they noticed a commotion involving a person Ms. Pineda would identify only as “a friend,” adding, “Poster Boy could be anybody.”

“The police came into a private event,” Ms. Pineda said. “They didn’t show a warrant to me or anybody. And the next thing we know, our friend is walking out with a bunch of guys we didn’t know.”

Without a doubt the police have arrested the wrong person

They’ve not only arrested the wrong person, in fact they’re on the wrong case. Plain clothes officers in an art opening? Looking for someone to arrest based on a tip from a flyer?

Why are city resources going to arrest an artist who said himself can only afford a razor blade to make his work? There are billboard companies with illegal signs all over the city collecting thousands of dollars per month off their crimes. Follow the money. This has to be the NYPD Vandal Squad in action.

Arrest the repeat offenders leading the organized crime outfits

If the NYPD has this kind of time on their hands, investigate illegal signs. As long as they are making arrests that wont stick, arrest advertising executives. I’ll quote Rami Tabello again, “There is a difference between crime and organized crime” and these outdoor companies are repeat offenders.

I wont even argue that Poster Boy is a vandal or that what he is doing is illegal. But who cares about a few signs on the subway when there’s such bigger fish to fry. Where’s the priorities? The sign enforcement unit doesn’t have enough investigators to begin looking at this 5+ story beast of an illegal sign on 520 West 17th Street and it’s been over 7 months since receiving a complaint. We’ve been on this sign since day one of illegalbillboards.org and nothing is happening because the resources are spent on tracking down New York’s hottest, penniless street artist.

New York loves Poster Boy. NYPD, on this one, the city is not on your side.