The London Advert Decapitator

[STN]

Okay can we all accept that yes I do hate myself for learning about this from the Guardian? Has anyone seen these?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2008/01/adverts_decapitated_into_art.html

 

[Immryr]

i havent seen them in person as i dont live in london, but have a look here...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_decapitator/sets/72157603480986566/

 

[zhao]

Okay can we all accept that yes I do hate myself for learning about this from the Guardian? Has anyone seen these?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2008/01/adverts_decapitated_into_art.html

do you think he measures the head size in the advert, take a photo of it, and then goes home and makes the alternate piece, and goes back to it and glues it in place? seems awefully time consuming.

i think it's enough to just splatter paint all over them. still looking for a paint ball gun that shoots large paint pellets...

 

[Pestario]

Yeah it requires photoshop trickery to reproduce the background behind the head so he's obviously looking for an A for effort.

 

[fokse vektaire xeven]

The reason you probably won't have actually seen one is they probably last a few hours. piece of a4 wheatpasted over a bus shelter frame

KAWS has been doing stuff like this for absolutely years, except he had the balls to steal the adverts, hand alter them and replace them.

another piece of gimmicky "culture jamming" that only has any efficacy or impact because of the internet. still- why not eh?

did anyone hear that banksy wall sold for $400,000???

i'd be tickled if somebody dogged it before it was removed.

 

[tryptych]

Reminds me of the "weeping Madonna" in Old Street last year

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showb...dals+make+Madonna+‘weep’+in+poster/article.do

The French lot mentioned in the Guardian article sound more interesting.

 

[IdleRich]

That doesn't really look like she's weeping, it just looks like a crap yellow stain.

 

[tryptych]

Eh, I thought it looked pretty good in the "flesh", more like bleeding neon cyborg blood than weeping. Quite spooky having it looming up over Old Street as you walked past.

 

[rockypoppy2]

The reason you probably won't have actually seen one is they probably last a few hours. piece of a4 wheatpasted over a bus shelter frame

KAWS has been doing stuff like this for absolutely years, except he had the balls to steal the adverts, hand alter them and replace them.

another piece of gimmicky "culture jamming" that only has any efficacy or impact because of the internet. still- why not eh?

did anyone hear that banksy wall sold for $400,000???

i'd be tickled if somebody dogged it before it was removed.

have you heard about a london council (camden i think but cant be sure) selectively repainting banksy stencils after they'd been vandalised by others. the one of the maid sweeping up the dust next to the roundhouse gets done over so much, but the council pays to have it restored. stupid


is it actually just a wheatpaste over the glass? i havent seen any of these, but i thought the person had got into the ad's frame to paster over it, they're relatively easy to get into with the right tool. Dr D has been doing this for a while, and cut up collective i find much more interesting.

 

[noel emits]

but the council pays to have it restored. stupid

You think? Seems preferable to the policies of councils that go out of their way to clean them off. Well it does seem a bit daft but it probably makes sense to them in terms of tourist landmarks now and probably as some kind of rivalry with other districts.

 

[mistersloane]

Wow the Dismantlers lot are GREAT

http://www.deboulonneurs.org/

There's that Parisian lot that take photos of people from their local community and blow them up huge and paste them over billboards in their area as well, can't find a link at the moment.

 

[rockypoppy2]

There's that Parisian lot that take photos of people from their local community and blow them up huge and paste them over billboards in their area as well, can't find a link at the moment.

guy who does that is called JR, he did the same thing with israelis/palestinians on the wall
he also did a dvd with some banlieue people which is really really really good, will get a link when i can.

 

[rockypoppy2]

You think? Seems preferable to the policies of councils that go out of their way to clean them off. Well it does seem a bit daft but it probably makes sense to them in terms of tourist landmarks now and probably as some kind of rivalry with other districts.

well, i think its sad that they only repaint over his stuff and clean other stuff away - i mean surely its not good that one person can commit "a crime" and not only get away with it but get their work selectively repainted when others are rotting away in prison for as much. yes i do think its banksy's status regarding tourism, all that woostercollective business - the glamorisation of graffiti, especially stencil work in adverts/magazines - its just so acceptable nowadays, completely defeats the point

 

[fokse vektaire xeven]

is it actually just a wheatpaste over the glass? i havent seen any of these, but i thought the person had got into the ad's frame to paster over it, they're relatively easy to get into with the right tool. Dr D has been doing this for a while, and cut up collective i find much more interesting.

The flicks i saw were. The "decapitator" has not taken the trouble to find the appropriate alan key to directly alter the ads. We can but hope for that aesthetic development.

The people who do this kind of thing see it as subversive- a stance against the advertising that has pervasively invaded urban public space. however- why work WITHIN a medium you avowedly despise? because "street art" is increasingly being used as PERSONAL advertising of a sort, now graffiti has moved into the cultural mainstream. so it's not really a contrary stance at all. it's just people looking to be noticed. also in this particular case the resultant images are aesthetically more offensive than they were in the first place.

have you heard about a london council (camden i think but cant be sure) selectively repainting banksy stencils after they'd been vandalised by others. the one of the maid sweeping up the dust next to the roundhouse gets done over so much, but the council pays to have it restored. stupid

Graff heads are much irritated by this as they view it as discriminatory- however as noel points out these pieces now actually function as tourist attractions. there's one in brighton that was dissed and the owner of the building has now fastened a perspex plate over it. the underlying fact is the public responds to what Banksy does.

 

[noel emits]

well, i think its sad that they only repaint over his stuff and clean other stuff away - i mean surely its not good that one person can commit "a crime" and not only get away with it but get their work selectively repainted when others are rotting away in prison for as much. yes i do think its banksy's status regarding tourism, all that woostercollective business - the glamorisation of graffiti, especially stencil work in adverts/magazines - its just so acceptable nowadays, completely defeats the point

Obviously that's going to piss people off, esp. if they see themselves as doing something valuable and artistic. It is acceptable now though, council sanctioned graff sites all over. May not be as subversive as illegal bombing but can still work to alter the environment and artsts can slip their subversive glyphs and codes into the work. Yeah, not the same though is it...

 

[tryptych]

The people who do this kind of thing see it as subversive- a stance against the advertising that has pervasively invaded urban public space. however- why work WITHIN a medium you avowedly despise? because "street art" is increasingly being used as PERSONAL advertising of a sort, now graffiti has moved into the cultural mainstream. so it's not really a contrary stance at all. it's just people looking to be noticed. also in this particular case the resultant images are aesthetically more offensive than they were in the first place.

Personally, Moet telling me to "be fabulous" is pretty high up on my list of aesthetically offensive images.

 

[rockypoppy2]

yeah definately graffiti nowadays is pure self promotion, even for the people looking to do it for more innocent reasons (like not even for the money - what money), it always was - i just look back at the old style wars era when it was all so revolutionary, and its kind of sad that the passion which enthused the youngsters to go paint and brighten up the city has given way to a cynicism with how we connect to the city around us. as for tourist attractions, well im sure i'd be guilty of a bit of graffiti tourism if i went to new york so i cant really complain about the ones down in london now can i

 

[rockypoppy2]

Personally, Moet telling me to "be fabulous" is pretty high up on my list of aesthetically offensive images.

key the fuck out of that shit, seriously though i was disappointed with the use of acid etch in the city, it promised so much when people first started tagging in it. you could blur out a whole ad permanently

 

[Immryr]

"The people who do this kind of thing see it as subversive- a stance against the advertising that has pervasively invaded urban public space. however- why work WITHIN a medium you avowedly despise?"

perhaps because critique is no longer an effective tool, and, as per zizek (or someone :O), the best way to subvert or break something is to over identify with it. :I

 

[Mr. Tea]

Personally, Moet telling me to "be fabulous" is pretty high up on my list of aesthetically offensive images.

It's the words more than images, but as a card-carrying grammar Nazi I'm always annoyed by commands to 'Go Create' or 'Think Different'.

If we're talking images, United Colors Of Bennetton are probably my pet hate - all those ultra-contrived-looking interracial couples, which scream at you "If you don't buy our products, you're almost certainly a MASSIVE RACIST!!!!!".

And on the subject of 'subvertising', one of the best things I've seen was a series of stickers stuck on Dove's patronising 'real women' adverts, one of which said This advert demeans fat women!. I also like it when someone simply scrawls PRICK on Tom Cruise's forehead when there are posters up flogging his new movie, stuff like that, because it's just some ordinary person who happens to have a biro in their pocket and feels the need to do that as they're waiting for a train, rather than some art-school graduate self-consciously engaging in 'cultural terrorism'.