You’ll have seen subvertising popping up everywhere recently, from co-ordinated campaigns against advertising and the state to individual artists taking autonomous action, like Hogre. Campaigning groups are also using the technique to make political points, whether about the UK government’s inhumane deportation system or the lack of recognition of LGBT history.

A portmanteau of subversion and advertising, subvertising has it’s origins in the detournement practices of the Situationist International. Now A new book from Dog Section Press – Advertising Shits In Your Head – takes a look at the contemporary subvertising movement, as well as offering the reader advice on how to get involved. These are three subvertising groups – Public Ad Campaign, Brandalism, and Special Patrol Group – featured in the book.

Public Ad Campaign

Jordan Seiler began subvertising at art-school. After being challenged by a teacher that he probably wouldn’t take over all of the ad spaces in a subway station for his thesis, that’s exactly what he did. His practice grew from there, as he took on more and more ambitious take-overs – including the world’s first international outdoor-ad takeover. He sees himself as more of an artist than an activist and claims he lacks traditional “political ambition”; however, he also says that he considers “good art to be activist” in and of itself.

Jordan now works with black and white geometric patterns, which – although aesthetically considered – deliberately avoid using a slick commercial advertising design aesthetic. His beautiful black and white installs are as far removed from adverts as possible, without just looking like empty spaces (which they would do if they were just black or just white). In addition to his collective projects, Jordan still does independent installs in his native New York, and around the world.

Unlike many other subvertisers, Jordan does not carry out his work anonymously, and believes it’s important that he claims ownership of his output. Starting out in the street art tradition, he called the project Public Ad Campaign as a pseudonym, but has since been more open about his identity. “It’s important to identify with your demands, to own them,” he suggests. “Rosa Parks would not have been Rosa Parks as Anonymous.”

Obviously you came from an art background. Do you consider your work, these days, to be more art or activism, or both, and where are the intersections between them?
I view my work as more art, but I consider good art to be activist. So, like, things that hang pretty above your dining room table are boring to me – not really art, more design. Art has this connotation for me of ideas and issues beyond any sort of aesthetic gymnastics and self-reflexive history.

So, I think my definition of art tends to sway towards activism, or social engagement. I consider myself more of an artist than an activist. And partly because I don’t really have any issues, and I don’t have any issues that I feel strongly enough that I can demand specific outcomes for and so this, this is all sort of an attempt to just put an idea out into the world and let it grow, which I think of as an artistic act.

Brandalism

Bill Posters started his art-life as a graffiti writer, writing on roofs, trains and walls as part of a graffiti crew while at university. After becoming politicised by the Iraq War, he ended up writing his dissertation on culture jamming, referencing Levebfre, Klein and the Situationists, and says this acted as the “anti-business plan” for what became Brandalism.

The first Brandalism project in 2012 had billboards and consumerism as its target, and saw Bill recruit a friend (who is still part of the anonymous Brandalism crew) to help with the installs. Though the billboards caught the attention of much mainstream media, including a 4 minute  segment for Channel 4’s Random Acts, the billboard twosome quickly realised that they were “just two people in a van”. Since then, their focus has been on empowering others to take their own actions, and every campaign since has seen more and more people involved.

Bill Posters sees the work of Brandalism – replacing adverts with art – as a gift. Unlike advertising, it demands nothing of the viewer, and can be viewed as a two way interaction. Internationally acclaimed artists have featured in the Brandalism projects – Peter Kennard, Gee Vaucher, Robert Montgomery – but on the street they’re presented as anonymous.

What would you like to be the outcome of your work? And has that changed over the course of the project
Yeah, it has, because the first project was, like, two people, thinking that they had something important to say – y’know, backed up by loads of academic theory and papers and just generally sound ethical understandings of what is good and healthy and important. But yeah, it has changed, because that was just two people in a van with a driver and a videographer.

Other artists had contributed so there was quite a good process, an international network there, kind of managed in digital space – it was a good first manifestation. But now, over time, the most important thing, for me personally, is process. It’s become very, very important, even from the art side of things.

How do you view your practice: as art or activism? What are the intersections?
Yeah, this question’s been going round in my head, because I don’t really know what art is. I just personally believe that in the current context, given our current position with regards to where our society is, and the age we’re in – which is the anthropocine, where we have this physical layer in the sedimentary history of the planet now that is forever changed through our actions – I cannot see any meaningful art that is not activist in nature, that is not changing that reality.

I mean, there’s creativity and there’s craft, but for me… I don’t want it to be utilitarian, but I feel that creativity and resistance now are so hand in hand, or should be hand in hand, because we need them to move closer to some form of wider consciousness that will hopefully emerge and develop the cultures that we live in to be something more than they have been.

Special Patrol Group

Special Patrol Group (SPG) are thought to be a shadowy, militant wing of STRIKE! Magazine. Their name is a reference to the controversial and now disbanded Met police unit, notoriously responsible for the death of teacher and activist Blair Peach.

Based in London, England, they started their work by taking designs from the magazine and installing them in bus stop six-sheet spaces, London Underground ad spaces and on billboards. In 2015 they were part of Banksy’s Dismaland exhibition, where they gave demonstrations in bus stop hacking and also made their Ad Space Hack Pack available, both to visitors of the attraction and online.

More recently they’ve been installing subverts in solidarity with other campaigns – including Netpol, the Heathrow 13 environment group and Veterans for Peace. At Glastonbury 2016, they launched their international Ad Hack Manifesto, as part of a subvertising installation in Shangri La. The ad-cabinet (which was procured legally but clandestinely from Clear Channel Outdoor) has now been installed at DIY Space for London, where it is used for subvertising training sessions.

What is the Special Patrol Group?
Well, it’s not really a group, for a start. It’s been many different people at different times. It’s horizontally and anonymously organised. It’s more of a tactic than an actual group, anyone can take direct action against advertising anonymously and claim it in the name of SPG. That’s both to protect people from police action, but also part of an anarchist tradition of presenting work anonymously. Oh, and it’s also a way of subconsciously reminding people that the Metropolitan Police Force are institutionally racist and can murder with impunity.

Do you see your work as more art or activism?
The two are completely intertwined. But always as ‘activism’ first and never ‘art’ alone. The aesthetic is fundamental to our work but must always be shaped by political motivation. The visual image must have a function and we increasingly reject ‘art for art’s sake’. It’s not enough that the image is radical, the positioning must attack something also. That said, we might just be vandals, attacking private property out of frustration and for the fun of it. I mean, it definitely is fun.

What would you like to be the outcome of your work?
We have an anarchist, anti-capitalist outlook, and we’re just trying to suggest alternatives really. When politics and art collide on the streets we can challenge the corporate capture of our public spaces and turn the language of consumerism against itself. But more broadly the intention is to activate and politicise people, to use public space, and encourage social good. We’d really like people to take their own autonomous action, for people to make and remake their urban environments and claim their right to the city.

Also the total disbandment of the Metropolitan Police Force.

Grab a copy of Advertising Shits In Your Head.

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