Billboard Alteration Salutes U.S. Military in Iraq
Billboard alteration by the “California Department of Corrections”; April 17, 2006
Press Release from the CDC:
As a private institution dedicated to protecting California from the state’s most criminal advertising, the California Department of Corrections salutes the private security firms who have provided invaluable assistance to our colleagues in the U.S. military.
The advertisement is currently at liberty and it seems to have successfully readjusted to public life. However, the billboard will remain under surveillance by department staff to prevent recidivism and any potential lapse into its prior criminal behavior.
The California Department of Corrections is a private institution dedicated to the protection of the public through the alteration, rehabilitation and improvement of California’s most criminal advertising. Initiated in 1994, the department is operated by individuals who feel that California’s correctional facilities have been insufficiently managing the state’s most criminal elements.
For additional information on department programs and operations, please visit the CDC website at www.geocities.com/billboardcorrections or email the Office of Communications at cdc [at] revolutionist.com
(The Geocities site is down. See more from the hard-to-find CDC below the fold)
(from adiosbarbie.com)
The anonymous folks calling themselves the California Department of Corrections are responsible for this brilliant billboard modification. This prolific and highly skilled band of anticonsumerist havoc-wreakers have an impressive and ever-growing oeuvre that includes “Freshness First. Farmworkers last. Lucky you’re middle class,” which appeared outside a store in the Lucky supermarket chain during last summer’s flap over working conditions for strawberry pickers, and a Maxwell House ad turned police brutality protest.
Some groups affilitated with Billboard Liberation Front:
- Abrupt, Adbusters, The Cacophony Society, The California Department of Corrections, Pedro Carvajal, Freeway Blooger, Guerrilla Girls, The Lesbian Avengers of San Francisco, The Outdoor Advertising Association of America, Inc., Reverand Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, ®<sup>TM</sup>ark, Joey Skaggs, Slumber, Inc., Target Market, Tobacco Control Activism Guide #3, Urbanize
- Is it legal? No.
- Is it property damage? Yes and no. Sometimes Billboard Liberation Front does not alter existing billboards, but puts up billboards that are a take on familiar advertisements in empty spaces.
- Is it justified? I found the top example at Discourse.net, the blog of professor of law Michael Froomkin, brother of Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post.
“If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
With great best regards to The Freeway Blogger!
MORE STATEMENTS FROM BILLBOARD LIBERATION FRONT
California Department of Corrections
Q: Can you explain the internal operations of the department without compromising the security of the institution? For example, how do you decide which ads need to be corrected?
A: Every advertisement harbors latent criminal behavior and requires specialized care and treatment. The CDC prioritizes billboards that discriminate on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, disability and/or economic background.
Q: What is your ideal correction?
A: The ideal correction requires the minimum use of force for complete rehabilitation. Ideally the insertion or deletion of one letter will turn a criminal message upon itself. Other important factors include media reproduction, public opinion, relevance of location, potential recidivism, and ease of apprehension.
Q: How successful are your rehabilitation programs?A: Billboards have the highest recidivism rate of any group under our supervision. Relapses into prior criminal behavior have occurred as quickly as one hour and as slowly as one month after rehabilitation. The average relapse rate is seven days depending upon the neighborhood into which a rehabilitated subject is discharged.
BILLBOARD LIBERATION FRONT
Old fashioned notions about art, science and spirituality being the peak achievements and the noblest goals of the spirit of man have been dashed on the crystalline shores of Acquisition; the holy pursuit of consumer goods. All old forms and philosophies have been cleverly co-opted and re”spun” as marketing strategies and consumer campaigns by the new shamans, the Ad men.
You can switch off/smash/shoot/hack or in other ways avoid Television, Computers and Radio. You are not compelled to buy magazines or subscribe to newspapers. You can sic your rotweiler on door to door salesman. Of all the types of media used to disseminate the Ad there is only one which is entirely inescapable to all but the bedridden shut-in or the Thoreauian misanthrope. We speak, of course of the Billboard. Along with its lesser cousins, advertising posters and “bullet” outdoor graphics, the Billboard is ubiquitous and inescapable to anyone who moves through our world. Everyone knows the Billboard; the Billboard is in everyones mind.
For these reasons the Billboard Liberation Front states emphatically and for all time herein that to Advertise is to Exist. To Exist is to Advertise. Our ultimate goal is nothing short of a personal and singular Billboard for each citizen. Until that glorious day for global communications when every man, woman and child can scream at or sing to the world in 100Pt. type from their very own rooftop; until that day we will continue to do all in our power to encourage the masses to use any means possible to commandeer the existing media and to alter it to their own design.
THE iPOD/IRAQ BOARDS
COPPERGREENE.ORGPhotos taken on Broome St. and the subway, by Copper Greene, NYC, May 19,2004. The captions reads, “10,000 Volts volts in your pocket, guilty or innocent.
“Soho pedestrians with a sharp eye may have noticed something different about some ipod advertisements: an image from Abu Ghraib, designed to the specs of iPod posters but reading “iRaq: 10,000 Volts volts in your pocket, guilty or innocent.”
By June, 2004, the posters showed up in LA: The posters are plastered on a pharmacy Ad wall, its on the corner of Sunset Blvd and off of Silverlake Blvd ( SL blvd. continues under the Sunset bridge).
MORE FROM COPPERGREEN.ORG
BILLBOARDS: THEY DID IT LEGAL; BOSTON
Somebody’s watching
By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist | March 31, 2006
This is a very bad sign.
Actually, check that. It’s a funny sign: a mysterious billboard, sitting atop a parking garage nestled between Fenway Park and the Massachusetts Turnpike, showing nothing more than George Bush’s eyes and the phrase, ”Little Brother is Watching.”
The board advertises a website, www.littlebrotheriswatching.com, which in turn questions the legality of Bush’s domestic wiretapping program. The site also conducts a survey, provides links to various opinion pieces about the domestic espionage, and offers T-shirts for sale.
And now the state government — the Republican state government, it’s worth noting — wants the billboard down.
The sign is owned by local developer and civic good-guy John Rosenthal, who also owns and funds the iconic gun safety billboard that stretches along the turnpike in Kenmore Square. That billboard has been featured on network television and quoted by Al Gore. President Clinton once took his motorcade on a detour just to point it out. Perhaps not coincidentally, state bureaucrats have quietly begun questioning the legality of the gun billboard as well, but more on that later.
On the ”Little Brother is Watching” sign, Rosenthal has not one moment of doubt what’s causing it.
”It’s censorship on the part of the Republican administration either here or in Washington that doesn’t appreciate the humor or, frankly, having their tyrannical policies questioned,” Rosenthal said. ”If that billboard said, ‘Support Our Troops,’ no one would be questioning it.”
Rosenthal added, ”There’s no agenda here, other than a public discussion.”
State officials got involved in the discussion, all right. Their side of the conversation began like this: ”You are directed to remove this billboard forthwith.” Those words were in a recent letter from the state Outdoor Advertising Board.
Rosenthal doesn’t appear to have a lot of choice. Most billboards require a state permit. So-called on-premise signs do not need a permit, so long as they advertise something within the building. Because the ”Little Brother is Watching” billboard stands within 500 feet of a permitted billboard, it doesn’t qualify for its own permit, even though Rosenthal owns the garage beneath it.
THEY DID IT LEGAL: NEW YORK
Over in Chelsea, on 10th Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets, a particularly goofy caricature of George Bush graces a large billboard atop the snazzy Park restaurant. Underneath the image, it reads, “This is our president” with a signature from the artist, Stefano. From across the street, with the Empire State Building in the background, it’s a sight.
Puzzling billboards are nothing new to NYC’s outer Chelsea neighborhood. From strange Manhattan Mini Storage ads to artist Patrick Mimran’s cryptic one-liners, signage in the district residing north of 14th Street and shooting up Tenth Avenue often gives pause. But one recent addition to the western skyline is the most telling billboard of all, a two-tone representation of George W. Bush, his visage contorted in an apish expression. “This Is Our President,” it simply declares. Whether you are proud of that fact or not, the sign is one of the more prominent harbingers that the Republicans are coming and with their arrival a battle of ideas will take place on the city’s heated pavement.
The painting was created by muralist Stefano (aka Stefano Castronovo), a downtown artist who gained distinction in the ’80s for his controversial street paintings of a red-eyed Mona Lisa and another with a burning cross. At the behest of Eric Goode and Sean MacPherson, owners of restaurant The Park, Stefano made this “social statement,” he explains, “because [Bush] is really not the president that I would like to have [win] the next election.” Proprietors Goode and MacPherson mounted the sign above the restaurant in May and will keep it up through the Republican National Convention, August 30 to September 2, even though an ad for Catwoman has usurped it until mid-July. Luckily, RES caught sight of the sign before Hollywood dollars could render it temporarily invisible.
Accomplished street photographer Gus Powell, who made the cover photo of the president’s likeness, was chosen for his ability to capture daily life, and in this case the perceptible tension that has been in the air to some degree ever since 9/11. Powell is that rare New Yorker who was born in this city and still calls it home. His first collection of photos, The Company of Strangers (J&L Press), was published last year based on his observations of people in Midtown on their lunch hour. His work with Joel Meyerowitz took him to Ground Zero, where he assisted and made his own pictures of the destruction and recovery in late 2001.
A fine artist who at times does photojournalism, Powell adeptly approached the Bush sign and its transformation of the urban landscape. When asked about the impending RNC, though, he shyly remarks, “I can’t decide if I should run away.” Images of Chicago and the mayhem accompanying the Democratic National Convention of 1968 come to mind, although he doubts it will be quite so bad. “Either I’m going to be here making pictures or I want to be in Montana,” he determines.
“It still feels weird that this thing is happening in this town that is not really connected to the administration,” Powell adds. “But then it’s so obvious because of the 9/11 connection.” The City makes a nifty backdrop for Bush’s ad campaigns, yet its Republican leadership bears little in common with this conservative White House. Lacking support in federal funding, tax breaks or even respect, New York will be heavily burdened. Powell echoes most people’s biggest fear when he states, “The way things will be controlled will be pretty bizarre.”
The summer of 2004 will no doubt be remembered for many things, but at the moment, as the “This Is Our President” sign looms overhead, we hope it will be followed by a happier November.
THEY DID IT LEGAL.
THEY DID IT IN BED.
SHE’S STILL DOING IT.
Vancouver, Canada, 1999
WAR IS OVER! IF YOU WANT IT
Yoko Ono and John Lennon
1969
Billboard installed in Times Square, New York
Photo courtesy of Lenono Photo Archive, New York
THEY DID IT LEGAL IN NEW YORK CITY, 2004
BILLBOARD LIBERATION FRONT
The morning after the Town Hall Forum on Impeachment in New York City, I asked Bob Fertik of Democrats.com and ImpeachPAC.org what it was going to take. He said lobbying is good, letter-writing is good, grassroots activism is good, but what it’s going to take to bring about censure/impeachment is taking it to the streets.
“You mean like the Freeway Blogger?” I asked.
“Yes, like the Freeway Blogger,” he said.
Posters are nice, and the Whispering Campaign is probably very good, too. But the Freeway Blogger, Coppergreene.org, the Billboard Liberation Front, and the California Department of Corrections are doing great work.
When Henry David Thoreau was imprisoned for refusing, in protest of the Mexican-American War, to pay taxes, he was visited in jail by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
“Henry, what are you doing in there?” asked Emerson.
“Waldo, what are you doing out there?” was Thoreau’s reply.
- “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.”
With great best regards to The Freeway Blogger!
