Smashing the Image Factory.
This is not meant to be taken seriously, it's purely
for entertainment.
A Complete Manual of Billboard Subversion & Destruction
"When our work is done, advertising and billboards
will fly beside the soviet flag
in the museum of dead totalitarian experiments"
Billboard Improvement:- On how to clean up your high street
Destruction of any of the State's ideological weapons of control
will always be a rewarding experience. Most times it may be you
don't need any more than a tin of paint, a little humour and a quiet
night to turn a multinational's expensive advertising hoarding into
your own guerrilla tapestry.
But maybe there's a tobacco advert that really bugs you.
Maybe you've got a graphic that would look good as a poster but
would look great - if only it fitted over a ten foot high Malboro
smoking cowboy (still retaining the beautiful sunset over the
Rockies). Maybe you`d like to wreak a joyful and subversive doubletake
on unsuspecting victims of the advertising machine.
Methods of devastation and total obliteration are covered
in the rest of the manual. This section deals with the direct
subversion of the billboard's message- to answer it, question
it, or overturn it, all at their expense.
With the use of a few simple tools it is possible to take
their glossy hi-tech death culture billboards and turn them back
on themselves. We`ll start with straight up graffiti and work
up to do-it-yourself, no holds barred Big Art.
If you want to use spray cans then beware illegible scrawl
and spelling mistakes during the excitement. Also: like the hip
hop graffitos, get yourself a pistol grip plastic handle that
fits around the can, saving on tired fingers and ensuring that
the paint goes in the right direction. These are cheap and easily
available at any autoshop.
But maybe you want to go a little further. Well the most
effective alterations are certainly the simplest: the addition
of one or two letters; or a speech bubble: or pasting over certain
words or letters with appropriately coloured paper. All over Britain
during election time `you can`t trust Labour` became `You can
trust Labour` by pasting plain white paper over the offending
`T`- the message was wrong but the method simplistically brilliant.
It must be said that the skilfully reworked billboard directs
the passer-by to a consideration of the original corporate strategy
in the context of a thoughtful reaction.
A huge slogan or subversive graphic on a roadside billboard
helps you reach the people that these are aimed at - car drivers
- to make it plain to them how destructive and alienated a car
obsessed culture really is.
WITH THIS IN MIND, LET ME INTRODUCE YOU . . . .
THE PHOTOCOPIER AS A WEAPON OF SUBVERSION . .
 Get
access to a photocopier. It has to be one with an enlargement function.
Some will only enlarge up to 141%- that is, it will turn an A4 into an
A3. Others might go 200%, the best copiers will go 400%. Try to find one
of these. Universities & Arts centres might be a good place to start looking
The most accessible and cheapest machines have a set enlargement
button; that gives 141% Why 141%- well, it's a dimension that
always retains the relative dimensions of the two sides (that's
why A4 paper is the size it is). Really. Divide the length of
an A4 by its width and you get 1.41. Width divided by length is
0.71. What it means practically is that if you take an A4 and
blow it up 141% it becomes an A3. An A3 blown up 141% again doubles
in size exactly (to become an A2). And so on, A1, AO etc.
Doing this you can take a graphic on A3 and keep doubling
(141%) each half of the paper the copier spits out and watch it
grow to the size you want.
No problem. Except that this is incredibly wasteful of paper,
and time consuming (though quite straightforward). If you can
get at a copier that goes up in 400% steps then you'll be able
to miss out all the stages in between.
To explain this method, take an A4 piece of paper. Fold it.
It is now 71% of its size (an A5 in fact, which enlarged by 141%,
will be the A4 again). Fold the paper again- that's 50% (an A6-
put a picture this size on a copier and blow it up 200% and it
magically becomes an A4 once more). Now fold twice more and it
will be one sixteenth the area of the original A4, the sides being
a quarter of the original. If you unfold it, it'll have grid marks
on it. This is the essence of 400% enlargement.
Easy so far, eh? So do the same origami with an A3. Now get
your graphic as big as you can on an A3. Turn it over and draw
lines onto it to make it into quarters, and then again into sixteenths
(like you done with the folding lark above). You can then cut
the picture up and have sixteen little bits of paper- don't lose
them! Each one of these you blow up 397% (not 400%- you don't
want to lose any of the graphic off the edges) and hey presto
you've now got 16 A3 jigsaw pieces which, when put together, makes
you a big fuck off poster 1.6 metres x 1.1 metres. If you start
with an original made up of four or more A3's you got big enough
to cover whole billboards (or building). [Laser copiers will do
this sectioning for you- its called 'tiling'- they spew out all
the pieces from an uncut A3.]
If you can only get to a copier that goes 200% then you have
to quarter the picture, blow it up then quarter each quarter again-
if you see what I mean. You can paste all the tiles together indoors
with PVA/Copydex/Water soluble glue like you used in school (or
Sellotape on the back). You can redo bits in coloured paper; pick
out bits using coloured toner; or paint on it; the limits are
your imagination. Mind you, don't try to paste up graphics any
bigger than 2m x 1m; if your message is larger, make it up of
big chunks and butt the sections together as they go up.
If you want to fit something over an irregular size picture
then you have to measure up the original and work backwards. Draw
up a sketch of what you want to subvert and see how to fit A3's
into it. Stare at it long enough and it becomes apparent.
For lettering, you can do letraset and keep blowing it up,
but again it's wasteful. Either paint your slogan on paper or
better still, find a computer and do the alphabet, one letter
on each A4 printout. These are your originals, don't paste them
up. When you want a slogan take each letter in turn on a copier
and blow them up. With a computer you should be able to find the
exact right typeface as is already on the billboard. Very impressive
was some bright spark's addition to Volkswagon's "We put people
in front of cars" by reproducing in exact type underneath: "And
children under the front wheels".
A READY ASSEMBLED GRAPHIC CAN BE PASTED UP IN LESS THAN
THREE MINUTES
Use wallpaper paste for the hit, a bucket and a paint brush.
Coat the area to be covered with lots of paste, place on the graphic
and go over it again with lots of paste (a little pva in the mix
makes it set quicker and waterproofs it as well.) A broom will get
you higher- cut down the head to fit inside the bucket.
Watch the billboards for when they change them - in our area
they get recovered every third Thursday, so if you catch them
right you can get plenty of outside studio space and time for
your visual banditry.
Rather than skulking around in the middle of the night looking
suspicious and getting nicked, put on some overalls, get a gang
together and go for it during daylight hours- you`ll be able to
see what you are doing for starters. Job's worths giving you shit
are- in our experience- few and far between; most passers by we've
met think it's a good laugh. If the beast catches you while putting
it up, "Why officer, look, it peels straight off again!". Hope
this has been of some interest and future use for you (if you
got this far!). Once you start doing it, it just seems to flow.
Oh, and remember, happiness is subversive when it's collective.
"People tend to do a double-take on billboards we've tampered
with. We think it's far more effective than just spray painting
a billboard because people automatically dismiss that. With our
slogans they don't immediately recognise it as agit-prop."- AVI
Billboard Interventions
Publish The Method
Generalise Knowledge - Increase Self Activity
The billboard artist's goal is to throw a well aimed spanner
into the media's gears, bringing the image factory to a shuddering
halt. We work to unmask the real corporate activity behind the glamourous
image, and to assault the billboard itself, to question its given
function of marking out urban geographies (areas defined for consumption,
the territory devoted to the car, the space set aside for leisure
that always seems to lkack meaningful participation). Our actions
reclaim these billboards and use them as our own canvasses, maybe
to advertise our own campaigns but ultimately recreate our communities
for what we would rather see. After all, it's our walls that are
being rented out for business propaganda. So we should recycle them
to integrate once more the notion of Life and Living into the urban
centres of the 20th century. We can turn the tables on capitalism
if we recognise that we can all be artists- if we don't compete,
but play, play hard and play seriously. Billboard banditry is also
excellent preparation for more advanced forms of monkeywrenching.
as well as being empowering through having immediate visible results,
it's fun too.
BILLBOARD FELLING
The following section is taken from the American Earth
First! book "Ecodefense".
Safety
It is important to remove billboards. It is also important
not to get caught (so we can remove more billboards).
Personal safety from self-inflicted injury is also extremely
important when using the methods described below. Think of a sign
as a giant fly swatter and yourself as the bug. Get the picture?
Never stand in the area where a sign can fall (front or back).
Walk outside of this danger zone. Don't take short cuts. Watch
a sign closely the entire time you are cutting. Leave the outermost
poles for last. Always have an escape route planned if the sign
shows evidence of falling prematurely. Sawdust can get in your
eyes and prove irritating. A pair of good safety goggles, available
at any hardware stores, can eliminate this problem. They are essential
for contact lens wearers. Remember that goggles are reflective.
Always pull them off your face before looking at passing cars.
Sign-Cutting
When sawing, duck down while cars pass if they can see you in
the periphery of their headlights. Stop periodically to listen for
any indication of discovery. Felling is accomplished by pushing
on the outermost poles, aided sometimes with ropes. See the illustrations
for techniques on use of the rope. Use the rope(s) only for monkeywrenching
since it may have to be abandoned if your work is disrupted- you
don't want it accumulating fibres, dirt and oil stains that can
link it with your home or workplace. store it in a plastic trash
bag between jobs. Dropping a billboard face-up will allow you to
inflict additional damage by spray painting across the front of
the advertisement.
Billboarding is dirty work. Evidence that will remain on
your clothing includes bits of brush, dirt on boots and knees,
and sawdust. if you wear overalls, remove them before the pick
up and wrap the tools in them. After a night's work, clean off
your boots and launder your clothes. Vacuum your car boot, seats
and floor carpets. Drop the vacuum cleaner bag in a public bin,
away from home.
Field Notes
*Effective sign cutting requires a three person team: a driver
and two cutters. With four, your cutting team can have a look-out
who can also alternate with the cutters in shifts. A five person
team is the largest size for safe operations and permits two teams
of cutters and thus faster work at the target site.
*Axes are the least desirable billboarding tools. Sometimes
microscopic marks left on the wood can be matched to a specific
axe in the possession of a suspect. Saw marks, on the other hand,
are usually impossible to match up. like files and grinding wheels,
their surfaces are constantly changing and so are the marks they
leave.
EARTH FIRST'S LONG ARM OF THE LAW
If you wanna write on a billboard that's too high to reach,
you can either get a ladder (which isn"t particularly convenient)
or build a spray can extension rod:
Obtain a broom handle or another solid, strong but lightweight
wooden pole (#1 in the illustration).
At one end cut out a wedge, half the width of the pole. Fit
a flat metal bar to the remaining wood (#2).
About one foot from this bar (or the hight of your spray
can), attach a support clamp on which the can will rest (#3).
Fit an angle bracket on each side of the pole, about 8 inchesfrom
the end (#4).
The spray can should fit between these brackets. Tie a length
of plastic coated wire to the flat metal bar (#2)and feed it through
a hole in support clamp (#3)and screw-eyes attached the length
of the pole (#5).
This wire, when pulled will press down the nozzle of the
spray out.
An optional extra is the roll-top of a deodorant bottle,
fitted to the support clamp (#6). This will help maintain
an even distance between the spray can and the billboard. You
may have to experiment a bit to get the right measurements to
fit your can of spray paint.
Although these extension rods are clumsy to use at first
(you're not kidding) with practice they become very effective.
Fun with paint
Fill thin plastic bags one third full with half and half paint
and thinners (for better splatter); tie up tight, squeezing all
the air out; carry half a dozen in a box to the target and, standing
at an angle- unless you want to cover yourself- throw, throw, throw.
Another proven splattering technique (that you might find a use
for on other occasions perhaps) involves borrowing a pressurized
water-type fire extinguisher from a business or public building.
The ones you want are the old red ones with a valve, the same valve
as on inflatable tyres.
Empty out the contents and relieve all the pressure inside.
next, open the top and use a funnel to pour in a well-stirred
50/50 mix of paint and thinners or the preferred water and acrylic-type
house paint. Pressurize the extinguisher secretly at a petrol
station; watch the pressure gauge to know when to stop.
Use this spray gun to deface billboard ads. Do not attempt
to cover the whole sign but make the most of your paint. clean
the extinguisher out after each use or it will clog up. When using
the anarcho-sprayer, be sure to wear grubby clothes or overalls,
since you'll occasionally get splattered yourself. keep your hair
pulled under a hat to keep out paint. A dark wide-brimmed hat
can provide splay protection.
At your earliest opportunity, check your skin, hair and clothes
to make sure that there is no incriminating paint on your person.
Keep a small can of paint thinners ( or water, depending on the
type of paint used) and rags on hand just in case.
"A Commando of young Argentine Communists made a
breakthrough in the realm of pirate broadcasting: the first pirating
of an electronic billboard advertisement! Armed with revolvers,
five young men burst into the offices of the Argentine electronic
billboard company yesterday and forced the operators to broadcast
Communist propaganda in the heart of downtown Buenos Aires."
- Paris-Presse, 10-1-63
|
