When securing a free-for-all approach to assault rifles via the 2nd Amendment, you will find an endless stream of people arguing for it on right-wing radio and television these days. The messages all seem mixed, however, and many are fueled by a righteous no-holds-barred rage that disparages thoughtful discussion and considered opinions. No wonder people are fighting, sometimes with guns.

Also, protect life.

“There’s an awful lot of time spent arguing about what a bunch of dead dudes in wigs intended for us, without grappling with the fact these same dudes also intended slavery and pantaloons,” say the philosophizing scribes behind the anonymous InDecline billboard highjacking we feature today on BSA.

About the US daily gun slaughter, today’s in Nashville, InDecline shares their recent re-writing of text on the side-by-side billboards that adorn this Tennessean highway.

Websters defines Irony as “the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning.”

The sad irony is the politicized rhetoric that prizes life before birth – often later ignores or strips it of humanity when a child is a neighbor. We have high rates of child poverty, child hunger, and, thanks to the primarily religious leaders in the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and the various wings of the organized church, child sex abuse. Save the children, indeed.

“Don’t shoot the messenger!” says InDecline in its press release.

GREATEST HITS OF A NATION IN DECLINE

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To highlight their accomplishments and escapades during 2021 Indecline debuts a full feature movie titled “Side Hustles” today.

Ultimately, it’s a show reel of greatest hits by the activist subverters of public space called InDecline – loosely strung together by an ongoing skit of a formal job interview that seeks to further illuminate the message, but sometimes tires. Anonymous by necessity, this mid-length docu-portfolio gives little indication of the origination of the mainly young, mainly white, and mainly male masked American protagonists of the street art/performance art scene, but you have an idea that it is their politics and disgust that bind them as one.

The various installations range in skill, sophistication, and maturity – but something invariably impresses about each campaign. Clever Photoshop and elbow grease, and you’ve got yourself a subversive art installation that mocks both Easter and Q-Anon. A harrowing cable scaling of a massive statue of Christ to hang a pro-abortion banner looks far more dangerous and physically demanding.

Subverting a billboard to encourage masturbation is perhaps a bit of comic relief from the far heavier topics they target: Busting anti-abortion billboards to offer abortion services contact information, shining a light on police violence, and offering a no-holds barred criticism of a culture that births weekly mass shootings in cities nationwide.

Their methods may be driven by the economics of printing and installing their brand of détournement but the effect can be stunning and direct. A billboard showing off a gunmakers line of ammo says proudly “Born Here. Built Here” across a silhouette of the US map. It infers a national pride, a dedication to the 2^nd Amendment, a nod to blue collar labor, and a healthy wallop of xenophobic distrust. InDecline simply replaces one word so the slogan says “Born Here. Killed Here” to refocus attention to the bodies piling up from coast to coast.

Whether its riding freights to spread the ashes of a friend or an earnestly rageful powerchord punk and/or bluegrass country soundtrack or the corporate cluelessness of local news footage, if you stay for the full ride you see the themes that drive the work – and feel a hopeful promise, and a sense of dread.

Canaries in the coal mine for a decade or so in public space, InDecline’s multiple acts of art show how the trendlines all merge. By the time you are finished with the list of societal/political/socio-economic ills that InDecline is addressing through their guerilla art installations, you realize that the country they are responding to is already in the midst of a civil war and the forward path is scabrous.

Previous interventions BSA reported on appear HERE, HERE, HERE, AND HERE.

That charming GEICO gecko looks like he’s darned fed-up with the highway police in Memphis, Tennessee. Why else is he telling drivers to defund them?

In an act of detournement worthy of the earliest billboard artists/activists and Letterists, last night the INDECLINE collective altered the text of two displays to make that elegant green gecko rally for pulling the plug on funding the boys in blue, according to the press release they sent out after pulling this artful dodge.

“When we talk about abolishing police, we mean it’s past time to reimagine the system in its entirety,” they say. “Remember, it was once impossible for many Americans to imagine a country not organized around slavery.”

Yes, many would take that point – and “Defund The Police” became a moderately catchy slogan during many marches for rights across the country over the last decade. Unfortunately, it’s a slogan that is confusing and counterproductive, possibly because the police provide valuable services to society as well.

It’s true that Police brutality, corruption, militarization, dehumanization are definitely here and being discussed; and it looks like we are living in a police state often wherever you turn. Meanwhile, the social safety net is being shredded, and economic/food/housing insecurity is ever-rising, and the jail population is the largest per capita worldwide.

Bashing the institution of police with a baton won’t solve our problems at their root, but pulling the plug entirely doesn’t exactly solve it either, does it? What’s that word everyone loves to use today, nuance?

In the meantime, the time-honored practice of hi-jacking billboards for political or social messages is alive and well.

“Atlanta has long been considered a black Mecca,” the summary of the latest INDECLINE press release opines, “And yet it only takes a quick drive out into the country to be standing at ground zero of the “Lost Cause” narrative.”

Today we have the clever retort of the anonymous art interventionists with an ax to grind – targeted, they say at those who would like to continue the racist systems that have allowed perfectly average folks to feel superior for decades, centuries. INDECLINE says they went undercover to gain the confidence of a Civil War memorabilia store owner to surprise the neighborhood with this mélange of smurfs and clever wordplay on the side of his store.

The action, entitled “Respect Existence or Expect Resistance”, was pulled off in Kennesaw, GA, where the George Floyd protests last summer brought many rough conversations to the fore – including some just outside that store. In the heated and somewhat meandering statement put out by INDECLINE that accompanies these photos, they end with “The smartest thing the Confederates ever did was keep us fighting a war of rhetoric after they lost with cannons.”

If only that war ended.