You made it! Thanksgiving is over and you did not explode from eating too much pumpkin pie. Right?
A number of subverting artists and activists took over billboards in cities around the world this Thanksgiving holiday to celebrate “NO AD DAY” – an aesthetic effort to reclaim public space from advertisers who have slowly but surely crept into everything, producing an ever-present artificial and continuous knawing in the stomach that you are not handsome or pretty enough, rich enough, or somehow incomplete in a thousand ways.
Check out folks like Brandalism to learn more about a growing grassroots movement that began perhaps in the 60s with folks like the Billboard Liberation Front but has picked up speed and technique in the last decade. Of course artists like Abe Lincoln Jr. don’t need a special day to take over a phone booth – any day is fine.
So here is our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring Abe Lincoln Jr. Adam Fu, Bortusk Leer, Kenny Scharf, Lucky Rabbit, Maia Lorian, Mastro, Norm Magnusson, Tito Ferrara, Rawraffe, Solus, and Uncle Susan.
Top Image: Solus for The L.I.S.A. Project NYC (photo © Jaime Rojo)
The hi-jacking of civically minded historical markers is done very well here in the suburbs by Norm Magnusson “Jane King” (photo © Jaime Rojo)
Norm Magnusson “Jane King” (photo © Jaime Rojo)