When your budget is so large that a violation fee is merely an operating expense, “illegal” is a quaint term.
The power of advertising in the public sphere on our propensity to purchase raspberry-scented shampoo is so effective that hand-bill postering and billboards pop up all over our built environment (and natural environment) like mushrooms overnight. As cities everywhere debate or ignore the appropriate growth of advertising messages, entrepreneurial billboard builders often take the initiative to spread the paid messages in legal grey or red zone because the opportunities for making green are aplenty. Talk about bombing.
Desire Obtain Cherish “Is This Illegal?” (photo © Birdman)
The Los Angeles Street Art collective Desire Obtain Cherish favor the billboard for a bit of culture jamming periodically and they have just raised the irony a notch. In these new photos from photographer Birdman, we see what appears to be Desire Obtain Cherish using illegal billboards for installations – raising awareness of just how many un-permitted, unsanctioned, unapproved, and illegal billboards are in our midst. You can’t even rightly call this new installation campaign hi-jacking because it’s medium is already illegal. Compounding the fact is that this can also all all be done in broad daylight with foot traffic and cars whizzing by.
Desire Obtain Cherish “Is This Illegal?” (photo © Birdman)
Is this art? Conceptual art? Street Art? Art Activism? Community Service?
If your illegal message is on an illegal billboard in an illegal location, have you committed an illegal act? Do all those compounded “illegals” cancel one another, or create a cognitive dissonance-induced inertia?
Dang those kids for making us think about commerce, art, policy, and public space. In one of the videos below the end text clearly takes some positions but there are many to be taken. This will only mean trouble for the simple-minded who are in search of black and white answers at any cost.
Desire Obtain Cherish “Is This Illegal?” (photo © Birdman)
Desire Obtain Cherish “Is This Illegal?” (photo © Birdman)
Desire Obtain Cherish “Is This Illegal?” (photo © Birdman)
Desire Obtain Cherish “Is This Illegal?” (photo © Birdman)
“Is This Illegal?” – A video by Desire Obtain Cherish
Benjamin Alejandro “Is This Illegal?” Billboard Hijack, La Brea Ave, Los Angeles.
If you repost, please credit the photographer and link to this URL. Thank you.
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
Tito Ferrara, potentially the first Brazilian street artist to create in Norway, and his assistant, swiftly executed a remarkable feat – crafting a composition of two powerful jaguars adorned wit...
“When I make photographs, I often look into the eyes of the people I am witnessing,” says French-American photojournalist Peter Turnley, who recently published these images from his trip to Ukraine f...
Most viewers want to know, “How did he do that?” when looking at the medieval script arching and swerving through a splattering of stars or surrounding a black hole. Niels "Shoe" Meulman continues t...
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities. Now screening:1. BANKSY in Borodyanka, Ukraine2. The Wanderers - Dabs & Myla. A Film by Selina Miles3. The ...
Welcome to BSA Images of the Week! Ultimately people respond to graffiti and street art because of the humanity that vibrates from it. You may care deeply, or care not. If it is effective, ar...