The Anti-Advertising Agency » win

Support Jordan at Public Ad Campaign

Steve Lambert — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:13:55 +0000

Jordan Seiler has been fighting hard to make our streets more livable and interesting. I would easily attribute his hard work to the creation of this competition and this substantial change at the New York Department of Buildings – enforcing the removal of illegal advertising on construction sites and placing art there instead. Now we have a chance to support him and say thanks for his hard work. Vote for Jordan’s design in the Urban Canvas Design Competition! He deserves the victory and the prize money will go towards a better city. –Steve

From Jordan’s site:

Please Vote-Urban Canvas Design Competition

I was just selected as a finalist for the Urban Canvas Design Competition. The 4 winners are decided by vote and I need your help! Please cast your vote here. Your vote will help us to continue providing large scale public projects and critical investigations of how to best serve our collective interests in public space.

Untitled “While beneath the scaffold and mesh covering, architecture in New York City loses nuance to the rigid rectangular forms of construction. Through repeated woven patterns and perspective shifts the ordinary rectangle becomes an extraordinary tool with which to contemplate the surfaces of our city.”

A little history…

A while back PublicAdCampaign ran a project called NYSAT. Organizing the efforts of nearly a hundred artists, activists, and citizens, we reclaimed nearly 20,000 square feet of illegal outdoor advertising space run by a company called National Promotions of America. They also happened to be the same company illegally Wildposting construction sheds all over New York City. The unauthorized civil disobedience was definitely noticed by the DOB, and although a positive connection was never fully acknowledged, action was taken against this company swiftly after the project. The result was the removal of many of the illegal street level billboards as well as the end of large scale Wildposting in NYC. It seemed in some way we had won.

This left many of the construction sheds around the city empty, a bare blue surface begging for public interaction. Not more than a few months after the Wildposting stopped I received an email from within the DOB telling me about the Urban Canvas Design competition. It seemed that the city had taken steps to insure that the bare blue walls would come alive in the future. In fact, all of the construction safety structures would come alive, insuring that Wildposting would not continue and public art would take its rightful place. For me personally it also proved that direct action projects like NYSAT can have a serious affect on the quality of our shared spaces.

With that said, out of the 8 finalists, 4 will be selected by the public. Each of these individuals will receive $7,500 as an award. While this is not an immense amount of money, to a grassroots project like PublicAdCampaign it is a huge boost to our funding (of which there is none). This award would help us in numerous ways but probably most fitting, it would help us bring a project similar to NYSAT to yet another city. And if NYSAT was in any way responsible, however slightly, for the Design Competitions creation, the awards use for yet another civil disobedience project seems only too fitting.

A little about the design…

While I walked around NY looking at construction shed after construction shed, trying to pull inspiration out of the myriad configurations they took, I noticed again how ubiquitous they are around our city. I racked my brain for colors and pattern, complexity and simplicity, trying to envision my thoughts translated onto these surfaces. Many designs came to mind and over and over again I asked myself if I liked the design, but also how its repetition throughout the city might affect my continued appreciation of it. I thought to myself could I look at that everyday and possibly at many different locations? Many of the designs did not stand up to this criteria and in the end more complex patterns, arrangements of color fell to the side in favor of the simple black and white woven pattern I have been working with for the past few years in my public work. The pattern would transform the rigid structure of the architecture beneath, but allow the viewer to let it go relatively unnoticed if desired.

While I have been known to try to change my imagery often in order to remained un-branded as an artist and therefor escape criticism that I use the streets and advertising venues as advertising for myself, the woven pattern has continued in my work for a reasonable amount of time now. I promise that I will change this soon. Even as I write this I am working on a show for the Vincent Michael gallery which I promise will begin a departure from this simple, albeit affective design element.

DOB announcement PDF.

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Movement Happening on Illegal Signs

Steve Lambert — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:19:50 +0000

March has been a bad time for illegal signs in LA. Finally Illegal Advertisers are going to jail. Here’s info on some of the latest:

LA Weekly profiles advertisers in Los Angeles, as well as AAA compatriot Public Ad Campaign’s Jordan Seiler. Here’s how it starts “Supergraphic multimillionaire Barry Rush couldn’t have been pleased to hear a few weeks ago that Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich had taken the audacious step of jailing a compatriot in arms, a Hollywood landlord who, for an undisclosed sum, cut a deal with a shadowy firm that draped an illegal supergraphic around a historic Hollywood Boulevard building.”
Following the arrest, Ban Billboard Blight reports that several illegal “supergraphic” billboards have come down. “It’s surely no coincidence that companies have been removing these signs after City Attorney Carmen Trutanich filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against one sign company and a number of property owners, engineered the arrest and jailing of a landlord in Hollywood who put up a huge illegal supergraphic on an historic Hollywood Blvd. office building, and issued arrest warrants for sign company executives and a property owner who allowed three illegal supergraphics on yet another Hollywood building.” And they seem to be coming down all over the city.
Fuel Outdoor has finally been removing their illegal signs after losing in court.
Ban Billboard Blight has also reported on NPA Outdoor’s illegal activity in Los Angeles. And Public Ad Campaign has reported the NPA Outdoor is leaving New York.

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It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

Steve Lambert — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:11:30 +0000

Photo from a hot day, courtesy of Simon Jolly.

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In Philly Colt 45 ads are illegal as an unregistered handgun

Steve Lambert — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:00:05 +0000

Philadelphia, famous for it’s murals, has had some new additions to the walls – hand painted illegal ads for Colt 45. The people of Philadelphia have already managed to get Colt 45 Malt Liquor ads off their city buses due to community concerns. Yesterday they beat the murals.

Some more than 4 word long excerpts from the AP story:

A nonprofit anti-billboard group, the Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight, has complained to city regulators, saying the ads should be removed because they are in areas not zoned for advertising.

(Translation: Colt 45 is breaking the law.)

Nicole Seitz, the group’s program director, said the group knows of two painted Colt 45 ads in Fishtown, as well as about seven other similar ads for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Gayle Johns, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections, said inspectors were sent to investigate, but she did not know whether a citation was issued. She said the ads would be considered general outdoor advertising signs and would not be permitted under the zoning code.

So Pabst is a repeat offender in Philadelphia. What’s Philadelphia’s position on graffiti? According to the Philadelphia’s Police Department’s website:

Police officers from each division are assigned to enforce vandalism laws. They also investigate graffiti incidents and develop intelligence on significant graffiti vandals to insure the maximum penalty upon conviction. In addition, they cooperate with the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network.

Apparently the maximum penalty is painting over the ad and issuing 4 citations. Now had the murals been done with spray paint and not advertising for anything what do you think would have happened? Take a guess in the comments…

P.S. Wanna fight illegal ads in your neighborhood? Come to Eyebeam on Tuesday.

photo of colt45 ad brroklyn edition: corporate ads go native by kater

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