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Shop and Awe

From CT4CT: Creative Tools for Critical Times

Shop and Awe: Artful Critiques of Consumer Culture

This page is a work in progress. Please visit the Discussion section for links to more projects.

Contents

Artistic Projects

The Bubble Project

The Bubble Project

Ji Lee's The Bubble Project (2006 - ongoing) is a guerrilla art project that encourages community members to transform advertisements and other corporate controlled public spaces using stickers that resemble the speech bubbles used in comic strips. Participants are directed to photo-document their work and to share it via the artist's website.

According to Ji Lee's Bubble Project Manifesto:

Our communal spaces are being overun with ads. Train stations, streets, squares, busses, and subways now scream one message after another at us. Once considered "public," these spaces are increasingly being seized by corporations to propagate their messages. We the public, are both target and victim of this media attack. The Bubble Project instantly transform these annoying corporate monologues into open public dialogues. They encourage anyone to fill them in with any expression, free from censorship. More Bubbles mean more freed spaces, more sharing of personal thoughts, more reactions to current events, and most importantly, more imagination and fun.

See also:

Barbie Liberation

Barbie Liberation, 1993

The Barbie Liberation Organization's (B.L.O.) Barbie Liberation (1993) was an artistic prank in which the voice boxes of 300 talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls were switched. The modified dolls were then secretly returned to stores to be purchased by unsuspecting consumers. The B.L.O. was founded by Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men.

According to the B.L.O.:

The surgery was no simple matter — circuit boards had to be trimmed, a capacitor moved, and a switch re-engineered. The press made it sound like an easy pop-and-switch operation, but this took some research and dedication. The BLO returned the altered dolls to the toy store shelves, who then resold them to children who had to invent scenarios for Barbies who yelled “Vengeance is mine!” and G.I. Joes who daydreamed “Let’s plan our dream wedding!” Cleverly placed “call your local TV news” stickers on the back ensured that the media would have genuine recipients to interview as soon as the news broke. One BLO member counted up the many benefits of their program: “The storekeepers make money twice, we stimulate the economy — the consumer gets a better product — and our message gets heard.”

See also:

COMMONspace

COMMONspace, 2006-07

REBAR's COMMONspace (2006-2007) is a project that explored, evaluated, and mapped San Francisco's privately-owned public spaces.

According to REBAR:
In an effort to provide more public space downtown, the City of San Francisco has partnered with private developers to create a number of privately-owned public spaces. Some of these spaces are open and inviting - activated by public use. Others are under heavy surveillance, difficult to find, appear private, or are fundamentally inaccessible. To date, these spaces have not been systematically evaluated. The goal of COMMONspace is to evaluate, activate and reclaim these spaces as a critical part of the public realm and as a valuable component of San Francisco's intellectual and artistic commons.

See also:

Dow Does the Right Thing

Dow Does the Right Thing, 2004

The Yes Men's Dow Does the Right Thing (2004) was a media hoax in which a member of the Yes Men impersonated a spokesperson for Dow Chemical on the BBC World and discussed the company's position on the 1984 Bhopal disaster (on its 20th anniversary). Using the pseudonym Jude (patron saint of the impossible) Finestera (earth's end), he claimed that Dow had agreed to clean up the site and compensate those harmed in the incident. Immediately following this interview, Dow's share price fell 4.2% in 23 minutes, for a loss of $2 billion in market value. It later recovered after Dow issued a statement denouncing the compensation package and clarifying that Finestera's statements were part of a hoax.

See also:

Mortgage

Mortgage, 2009

Jota Castro's Mortgage (2009) is a meditation on the human costs of the global economic meltdown.

According to ArtSlant:

In the show the installation 'Mortgage' is emblematic for the artist's concerns and issues. A mortgage is the transfer of an interest in property to a lender as a security for a debt - usually a loan of money. The term mortgage comes from the Old French 'dead pledge', apparently meaning that the pledge ends (dies) either when the obligation is fulfilled or the property is taken through foreclosure. The work 'Mortgage' comes from the desire of the artist to violently illustrate the turmoil of our financial and economical system. Jota Castro choose the title Mortgage because of what the word means but also because generally speaking, the first to suffer from the crisis were normal people who could not pay their mortgage back. "Those people are depressed, anxious. The situation is affecting their marriages, relationships," says Richard Chaifetz, CEO of ComPsych, a Chicago-based employee-assistance firm that is counselling homeowners over mortgage fears. "People tend to catastrophize, and that leads to depression. Suicide rates go up. We see an increase in drinking, outbursts at work, violence toward kids. They feel trapped like a rat in a corner." For Jota Castro, 'Mortgage' is the suicide of our financial and economical system. The desperate situation of companies, states and markets caused by the financial crisis, the uncertainties of the last few months have changed the world we live in. The pledges are not ending but people are dying."

See also:

The New York Times Special Edition

The New York Times Special Edition, 2008

The New York Times Special Edition (2008) was a spoof edition of the New York Times created by the Yes Men, Steve Lambert, CodePINK, and a number of other artists, writers and activist groups. 1.2 million copies of the paper were printed and distributed for free on the streets of New York City.

According to the New York Times:

The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were legitimate. The paper is dated July 4, 2009, and imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics. The hoax was accompanied by a Web site that mimics the look of The Times’s real Web site. A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition.

See also:

Photoshop Adbusting

Photoshop Adbusting, 2008

Photoshop Adbusting consists of a series of stickers/images applied to billboard advertisements with the intention of reminding viewers that photographs of models used in advertising are heavily manipulated and retouched using Adobe Photoshop and other image-manipulation software.

See also:

Reclaim the Streets (RTS)

Reclaim the Streets

Reclaim the Streets (RTS) describes both an international protest movement and a street theater tactic used by activist groups and artists to draw attentions to a number of environmental and social issues, including the private ownership and control of public spaces. RTS actions are non-violent and creative, often resulting in temporary and spectacular street parties. RTS was founded by Earth First members in London during 1991.

According to Reclaim the Streets (RTS):

Ultimately it is in the streets that power must be dissolved: for the streets where daily life is endured, suffered and eroded, and where power is confronted and fought, must be turned into the domain where daily life is enjoyed, created and nourished.

See also:

What Would Jesus Buy?

What Would Jesus Buy?, 2007

What Would Jesus Buy? is a documentary film by Morgan Spurlock starring performance artist Bill Talen in the role of Reverend Billy. The film follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as the tour the country in an effort to save Christman from what Talen describes as the Shopocalypse.

According to Warrior Poets Releasing LLC:

From producer Morgan Spurlock (SUPER SIZE ME) and director Rob VanAlkemade comes a serious docu-comedy about the commercialization of Christmas. Bill Talen (aka Reverend Billy) was a lost idealist who hitchhiked to New York City only to find that Times Square was becoming a mall. Spurred on by the loss of his neighborhood and inspired by the sidewalk preachers around him, Bill bought a collar to match his white caterer's jacket, bleached his hair and became the Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Since 1999, Reverend Billy has gone from being a lone preacher with a portable pulpit preaching on subways, to the leader of a congregation and a movement whose numbers are well into the thousands.

See also:

See Also

External Links

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