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Brandalism

The 'Brandalism' movement, a portmanteau of 'brand' and 'vandalism', is a 'subvertising' project comprised of 26 various street artists, all of which conspire to rise against corporate advertising. Created in 2012, the movement has since then created thousands of outdoor subvertisments which can be seen on billboards, street walls (graffiti), bus shelters and more. Brandalism activists believe that traditional advertising techniques are intended to shape our understanding of what it means to be happy, beautiful and successful. Consumers have been molded to believe that products have the power to improve their lives, eliminating unhappiness and insecurity. The Brandalism movement was thus created with the intent to depict the truth behind corporate motives by visual exploitation and reclaiming public space through consumer resistance. Brandalism's ultimate goal is to not only attract public attention and awareness, but go as far as to protest to political figures, in hope of eventually banning outdoor advertising. In order to eliminate the psychological negative effects advertising poses on people, referring to advertisements as "harmful visual pollution". This issue is however, very subjective as different urban contexts, people from different backgrounds and cultures have universal or distinct visual preferences. Regardless of the context, they similarly all have the same intent, and that is to persuade people to be pushed by their internal desires to buy. With that being said, advertising and commercial signage needs to be measured, controlled and managed. Studies have shown that increasing the amount of pleasing elements in an urban environment improved individuals' well-being, in particular...urban landscapes can help people pay attention or restore their capacity to pay attention. Therefore it is crucial that the visual elements within an urban space are conveying messages that psychologically stimulate a positive effect on a society. People are observant by nature and visually become influenced by the messages that are presented to them, which is why the Brandalism movement works hard to reverse the negative effects of visual urban space advertising.

Edward Bernays or Sigmund Freud's nephew, is known as the father of modern advertising. He used his uncle's ideas based on the human mind and subliminal drives in order to understand and create a way to convince people to buy products. In fact, Bernays even collectively helped the American government to form propaganda tactics which influenced American men to join the military during the First World War. In order to promote and continue economic growth, Bernays believed that it was vital for people to consume. Paul Mazur, a Wall Street banker during the great economic slump of the 1930s, declared "We must shift America from a needs to a desire's-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. A man's desire must overshadow his needs." These are the types of advertising motives that fuel organizations like Brandalism to rise above traditional advertisements and relay hidden truths to the public. People have been influenced to be led by their desires in order to consume more and as Bernays believed, 'help' their economy flourish. These subtle messages to consume are presented to people on a daily basis, and Brandalists believe, as much as you can ignore these messages, people are unable to avoid them. They take form of various marketing strategies, and are on average presented to a person 3,500 times a day. Brandalists also note that, these desires which fuel people to buy products also instigate an illusion that they can achieve an 'idealistic' version of perfection, which is in fact unattainable. Influenced by outlets such as billboards and magazines, people are presented with models projecting the 'ideal' or 'perfect' body image, and feel the undermining desire to look like those models. Influences such as these, are the reason for more controversial issues associated with the affects of advertising, such as eating disorders known as Bulimia and Anorexia. People worldwide, are taught by advertisers to be led by their desires and treat themselves in order to attain beauty, popularity and wealth, however, if a person is unable to attain the right mix of possessions, they will in fact feel the opposite and instead feel unwanted and be socially excluded. These negative effects are some of the reasons why Brandalists passionately strive to overpower corporate advertising.

The Brandalism movement also fights to reclaim public spaces back from corporations that are said to be placing more and more advertisements in spots they typically would not put them in. (For instance, more advertisements are appearing on public forms of transportation) When in fact, public spaces represent spheres of deliberation and action, and are open to all citizens independent of identity politics. But, with the rise of industrialization, mass media and popular culture, those spaces have been claimed by large corporations, allowing themselves to place advertisements in various public spaces, so that people are involuntarily forced to see them. With organizations similar to the Brandalism movement, people worldwide have began to create consumer resistant movements which reclaim these spaces, by satirically mocking the messages being relayed through subvertisments.

Shop Until You Drop in Mayfair, London. Banksy has said "We can't do anything to change the world until capitalism crumbles. In the meantime we should all go shopping to console ourselves.

History

The anti-advertising movement began revolting against mainstream advertisements in London, England. The movement was created by culture jammers who refused to be bystanders of corporate controlled media. Their creative artworks have spread widely across other parts of the UK and most recently to Paris, France. Their main focus is to create spoofs and/or parodies of corporate or political advertisements through the use of various artwork. Their official website Brandalism publicly proclaims the following, "our interventions are a rebellion against the visual assault of media giants and the advertising moguls who have a stranglehold over messages and meanings in our public spaces, through which they force-feed us with images and messages to keep us insecure, unhappy and shopping." Their skills and techniques are mainly influenced by 'subvertising' which is similarly referred to as, altering an existing image or icon and creating a new one, in a satirical manner, and are known to be part of a subculture. The movement's main inspirations come from Agitprop, Situationists, and Street Art movements. Throughout the years, Brandalism has created various activist movements, those of which include, The '48 Sheet' (2012), The 'Six Sheet' (2014), and 'COP21 Climate talks' (2015).

Banksy

Banksy is a graffiti artist, political activist and film director from England. His satirical street art can be compared and exemplary of some of the work done by Brandalism artists. His art is intended to mock centralized power and inform people that they can resist against the dominating, consumeristic entities of society. He has often described graffiti as a type of guerrilla warfare intended to strike back against consumeristic motives. Banksy's identity remains anonymous, for reasons that people believe he does not want to be held accountable for committing illegal activity, also known as graffiti. This mysterious artists has stimulated what is called, the 'Banksy effect', which inspires other street artists to conceal their identities, to not only protect themselves from authorities, but to keep their audiences intrigued. His effect has inspired and influenced many artists part of the Brandalism movement, to be courageous enough to stand up against corporate power. His street art and stencilling technique have also set an example for both upcoming and mature artists. As of 2014, Banksy has been referred to as a cultural icon in England, alongside famously well-known individuals such as William Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth, Elton John, The Beatles, etc.

Street art

Street art, began as an underground subculture and gained popularity during the graffiti art boom during the early 1980s. It has since become a major part in visual space in many cities around the world, and is recognized as an art movement. Street artists that have been defining the practice since the 1990s are part of a large contribution towards contemporary art and visual culture. "Street art circulates a visual vocabulary and set of stylistic registers that have become instantly recognizable throughout mass culture. Street art is studied extensively and corporations often define it as a form of vandalism, due to its defiant behaviour against mainstream media. By 2000, street artists had formed a global urban network of knowledge and their work appeared more utopian, anarchic, and aggressive. Their main intent however, has always been deeply associated with the particular city they work from, in order to depict messages of protest, critique, irony, humour, beauty, subversion, or all of the above. A well-placed street piece will reveal the meaning of its material context, making the invisible, visible again, a city re-imaged and re-imagined.

Brandalism as a subculture

From the beginning of the 1960s, graffiti has been referred to as a subculture, with senior artists being called 'kings', and who would pass down their skills and techniques down to their newcomers. In doing so, they maintained to keep their artistic knowledge attainable to only those part of this subculture. In the 1990s, things shifted within this subculture with an evolving new breakthrough known as, neo-graffiti. Neo-graffiti intertwines script with all other forms of media to depict an underlying message. Neo-graffiti artists are keen observers of the urban spaces in which they live in, they learn to understand these spaces in terms of visual resistance. They know exactly how to use corrupting symbols and signs to disrupt corporate advertising, because they have been exposed to public spaces since the rise of graffiti during the 1960s. This subculture expanded rapidly to various parts of the world, with people forming organizations to rebel against corporate control of public spaces. For instance, in Canada, a small group of individuals from Toronto, creating different forms of neo-graffiti. Different parts of the city such as, Kensington market, and Queen Street West neighbourhoods are now covered in an array of neo-grafitti. Brandalism as a modern form of subculture, is not exclusionary in a sense that anyone can participate regardless of their race, sex and gender, and most importantly, regardless of their artistic background or skills.

Movements

The '48 Sheet'

The first activist project involved the work of two individuals reclaiming approximately 36 large billboards, in cities such as Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and London. The project was intended to grasp audiences attention in spite of the 2012 London Olympics. Their revamped artwork targeted issues in relation to body image, debt, cultural values, the environment and visual pollution.

The 'Six Sheet'

Overwhelmed with the response they received from their first public movement, Brandalism decided to strike again. In 2014, they decided to expand their movement onto 5 more UK cities, this time installing 365 various artworks in bus stop advertising spaces.

COP21 Climate talks

Influenced by the climate justice movements which gathered in in Paris for the UN climate talks in 2015, 600 poster artworks were installed to evoke a message directed towards the airlines, care manufacturers, banks, and fossil fuel energy companies, all of which were sponsoring the talks.

Criticisms

Organizations which have formed movements similar to Brandalism have faced legal actions taken upon them, for public mockery. Kieron Dwayer, artist and semiotic disobedient faced a potential lawsuit against him when he created a parody of the well-known American coffee brand, Starbucks logo. His intent was to highlight the consumerism evoked by the company, proclaiming a form of protest and raising public awareness against the company for all to see. Corporations increasingly use legal chilling tactics such as the Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation to muzzle protesters, but they have failed to silence their critics or opponents. Other critics have also referred to Brandalists as, 'street spam', 'ad creeps', and more. During the COP21 climate talks in Paris, corporations and other critics viewed the Brandalism movement as a "revolt against corporate control of the visual realm". Ultimately, corporations want to maintain control of the advertising world, because if they lose the privilege to take over public space, it will limit their ability to maximize product display. Public space advertising is unavoidable because of the locations they are placed in, therefore people are forced to see the newest product being advertised. Corporations would be outraged if they lost the privilege to use public space as a way to sell their products to consumers. Activists working close with artists from the Brandalism movement have reached out to the major of London Sadiq Khan, to take action against outdoor advertising, and ban it. Or at least, place restrictions on it, so that large corporations do not have this amount of freedom associated with outdoor advertising. The continuous presence of graffiti and other forms of media associated with subvertising in the public space sphere suggests that it is more than just mere vandalism. Both graffiti and neo-graffiti participate in and against the spatial politics of redeeming public spaces in order for people not to be corrupted by the capitalistic values driven by corporations.

See also

• Culture jammers
• Subvertising
• Anti-consumerism
• Ad creep
• Situationist International
• The Yes Men
• Free Culture movement
• No Logo
• Banksy
• Street art
• Vandalism
• Billboard hacking
• Flash mob
• Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions

External links

• Banksy Official Website
• Brandalism Official Website