Presentation on Urban Art and Culture Jamming

[thecreep]

So while trying to share all of the amazing current art with the students and professors at my school, they have given me the opportunity to not only publish some scholarly articles about the art we all love, but to also give a couple of presentations this semester.

One presentation is on Lowbrow/Pop Surrealism/Etc. Will be 3 hours long, so a whole class. Im going to do my best to really give them a history of the scene, and hopefully get them hooked and excited about the art.

The next presentation is on Culture Jamming, Street and Urban Art. Its following 2 weeks of learning about how art affected advertising, the contributions of Edward Bernays and simply what we see on a daily basis. So I presented the idea of sharing artists that use public spaces to either go against ads, or just create art to beautify the streets. So I have a small list of artists to talk about, and was wondering if anyone had other ideas.

Ron English (Billboard Liberation Front)
Shepard Fairey
Banksy
Blek Le Rat
Joshua Allen Harris
Guerrilla Knitting
The Decapitator
El Mac

Any artists that could be added to the small list?

[svenman]

sounds interesting josh. have fun.
a couple that immediately spring to mind... sorry no time to give links at the moment

kaws - see his ad disruptions
d*face - see his billboards in particular his g20 interventions
cut up collective - pretty much everything they do
faile - a lot of paste ups include advertising, particularly some of the phone sex stuff.
espo - kind of on topic...

hope these may be of use.

[jemappellekat]

Sounds interesting, indeed... if you ever need any with comic backgrounds, I'm your girl...

[ken]

Sounds neat, hope you can open some eyes with your presentation. In terms of additional artists, I'm not sure where El Mac falls into play but those are some great recommendations on Sven's part. I'm a big fan of Trustocorp's, that might be a good addition as well:

www.flickr.com/groups/trustocorp/

[thecreep]

Killer, thanks for the recommendations so far.
jemappellekat: any suggestions would be welcomed, if not for this presentation but for my own curiosity.

Ken: your right, El Mac does not fit into that category. The course is called "new media", and the students are supposed to be learning all the new exciting things going on with art. The problem is that the professor, no matter how nice he is, just doesn't really know. So I see students losing interest, falling asleep (more than usual) and just being upset with their choice to take the class. So if I can give at least two days that they learn something, I will be happy.

My idea was to start the lecture with the Culture Jamming Artists, and then move into street artists like El Mac, and show them that its not all just "graffiti" that they see around town.

[sleepboy]

In terms of anti ads, I think Poster Boy and Faile have done anti ad stuff. Actually probably many street artist have done something like that.

This site has some good info as well.

www.publicadcampaign.com/

[COOPER COLE]

you should check out www.fauxreel.ca and look at his projections.

The lobotomy one is great.

[hellofructose]

Hey Josh,thats awesome. If you're going to do a presentation on culture Jamming don't forget the
OG's: Billboard Liberation Front,Ron English, Suicide Club (who inspired Fight Club's "Project Mayhem) ,Cacophany Society, folks in V.Vale's /REsearch Series books "Pranks"
and you might want to investigate Ken Kesey, too.
These above folks did things before documentation/credit/youtube, to avoid prosecution, just for the thrill of subverting their own reality. Rawk! Atta

[thecreep]

Thanks Atta, I think I have a good amount to go on. The trick now will be to put it all into an hour long lecture.

[ken]

Looks like you've got a fair amount to work with now! Atta's comment on OG's reminded me about the Guerrilla Girls, they're interesting more from a culture jamming though less "artistic" perspective.

[vandalog]

While Mac might not be 100% relevant, his collaborator Retna used to do ad disruptions. So did Barry McGee. And now McGee and Kaws both do a fair number of commercial projects, which is a bit of a change.

Also, John Fekner (My Ad Is No Ad) and Jenny Holzer (Inflammatory Essays) are two artists in the art world mainstream who started out with culture jamming.

[svenman]

jenny holzer just opened a new exhibition at the baltic... i'm going to try and get up to see it.

www.balticmill.com/whatsOn/future/ExhibitionDetail.php?exhibID=136



Jenny Holzer is one of the most acclaimed artists working today . In the 1970s she began to use text as art, creating provocative writings displayed and distributed through means akin to the mass media – on fly posts, T-shirts and, in 1982, an LED billboard in New York’s Times Square.

Encountering Holzer’s texts and works in galleries and in public spaces, viewers are confronted by startling, anonymous messages that present multiple points of view and ways of being. For the last thirty years, Holzer has used a variety of forms, such as LED signs, sculptures, and paintings, to embody writing. From 1977-2001, Holzer composed thirteen text series (including Truisms and Inflammatory Essays). She has also incorporated poetry and writing by others into her practice and, since 2004, has made the inclusion of government documents central to her work.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, available from BALTIC SHOP, with essays by Elizabeth Smith and Joan Simon and an interview
with Holzer by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh.

[thecreep]

Mar 8, 2010 16:15:42 GMT -8 svenman said:

jenny holzer just opened a new exhibition at the baltic... i'm going to try and get up to see it.

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Jenny's work definitely fits in with this whole theme, but most of the students if not all of them have been exposed to her work through various courses. I want to use this opportunity to show them art that the professors are even unaware of.

[thecreep]

Ok, so the presentation went well. Went on for about an hour, and I noticed that many of the students that usually leave after the break actually stuck around to see the slideshow. Right after I was done, some good applause and then they bailed leaving just a few students left for the professor to finish the main lecture.