Billboards
Click the images below to explore each of the billboards 14X48 has posted!
^ Billboard #17: If you lived here...
|
Artists: Anthea Behm and Avi Alpert
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor, LMCC, and individual donors Posting Dates: July 27, 2018 Location: 286 Spring Street (east of Hudson St), New York, NY Press Release |
" This billboard mimics the real estate advertising slogan, 'If you lived here, you’d be home by now.' In our version, we ask viewers to pause and reflect on what it means to be “home” in a city of massive and ongoing gentrification and displacement. We want to pierce through the cruel irrationality of the market to provoke new, more moral bases for housing. How can we, collectively, act to make sure that our own well-being is not caused by another’s suffering? What justice is due to those who have been forced from their homes or who can’t afford a home? What would it mean to imagine home not as a commodity to be purchased and exchanged by the highest bidder, but as a fundamental human right based on need and dignity?
Artist Anthea Behm has used a unique process in the making of this billboard to mimic the “uneven development” of New York housing. She has taken the text and, using a stencil, made the words appear on photographic paper through an uneven exposure to light (access to light being another sign of the inequality of housing stock). The paper is then itself unevenly developed through different amounts of developing fluid for different lengths of time. The resulting photogram is then scanned, here mimicking the process of the nearby Wall Street traders who convert actual human labor into digital capital that they keep for themselves and use to displace others. The history of the area now called SoHo is itself a history of uneven development. We can trace residence back to the Lenape people who, along with the Susquehannocks and others, inhabited much of the East Coast prior to European arrival in the Americas. Through bad translators, the Dutch “purchased” the land from the Lenape, although the Lenape leader Mattahorn almost immediately denied the claim, to no avail. Under Dutch control, the SoHo area itself took on a somewhat progressive mission, as it became land owned by manumitted slaves of the Dutch West India Company. This, too, was somewhat short-lived, before the English took over the area and curtailed the rights of free blacks, especially after the 1712 Slave Revolt. For the next few hundred years, the area would transition from farmland to homes to industrial spaces. Deindustrialization up to the 1950s left abandoned factories that artists would eventually make into the city’s first lofts. These artists would eventually fight to legalize their loft arrangements. While some became wealthy, others became victims of their own success, as a new generation of Wall Street traders bought into the loft lifestyle from the 1980s on and displaced many who had not been lucky enough to buy the spaces. Today, the area, especially farther west, continues to undergo uneven development as part of New York City’s mad dash to be luxury space for the few. New converted factory spaces open almost weekly, it seems. They’re available to the highest bidder, but if you lived here, you’d be in someone else’s home by now. This project is accompanied by a digital pamphlet with more info on the project and how to get involved in fighting gentrification. We have also produced a series of fake Craigslist ads which covertly guide readers to websites with information on housing justice. " - Avi Alpert and Anthea Behm |
^ Billboard #16: Quién Manda
Posting Info
Artist: Giovanni Valderas
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor, Vicki and Bruce Heyman/Uncharted and individual donors 
Posting Dates: June 18, 2018
Location: 149th Street and Grand Concourse Ave, Bronx, NY Press Release
|
Quién Manda
"Quién Manda", a Spanish idiom which imprecisely translates to “Who rules?” poses an emboldened question of agency. Who chooses, who votes, who rules? Valderas created the billboard in the style of a piñata, a form associated with celebrations, in order to highlight the complex history between the United States and Latin America. The text, disguised in this celebratory form, provokes discussion and self reflection.
Valderas' previous installations engage the Latinx community through guerrilla public art installations. He often incorporates "Spanglish" idioms used in Chicano/Latinx communities that are difficult to translate into English. The text becomes a metaphor for cultural misunderstanding. In an ongoing project of the same name, Valderas makes yard signs by hand and disperses them into Latinx neighborhoods, mimicking political yard signs found during elections season. This project aims to increase voter turnout in historically low-turnout Latinx communities. To accompany the billboard, Valderas urges viewers to act in support of DACA and the Keep Families Together Act which affects thousands of people in the Latinx community, and is currently under threat in Congress. Valderas has created a website where viewers can submit their name and a brief message for their representative in Congress. For each submission, Valderas will make and mail a QUIÉN MANDA postcard to Congress. |
^ Billboard #15: Infertile American Dream
Posting Info |
Infertile American Dream |
Artist: Kei Ito
Curator: Liz Faust Sponsor: Red Rock Outdoor and individual donors Posting Dates: February 26, 2018 Location: Corner of Woodpoint Rd and Maspeth Ave near the Graham Ave L Station, in Williamsburg, NY Press Release |
Infertile American Dream is a C-print, which was created by exposing light-sensitive paper to sunlight on November 8, 2016.
The increase of nuclear armaments worldwide, and the ramping up of nuclear tensions between the US and North Korea harken back to the terror of my grandfather’s experience during the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. By his account, it seemed as though the sky was lit by hundreds of suns. On that day, the very fabric of life that he knew, his friends, family, and even the landscapes of the city were completely annihilated. Any trace of home seemed to never have existed, as if his home was never even built. As a 3rd generation A-bomb victim who is now a resident of America, I find the chaos in the current political establishment unbearable. Political divides have deepened, and nuclear war seems closer on the horizon than it has ever been in my lifetime. Blind fear directed towards to a group of people through prejudice and misunderstanding caused by media; the realization that the home, in both physical and spiritual sense, can be taken away as quickly as thirty minutes by a single bomb and the chain reaction that follows. After we reach the point of no return, the American Dream will be unsustainable--an empty and barren wasteland filled with nothing but ash left for future generations. Like the unassembled home in Infertile American Dream, our children will not be able to have a chance to conceive their ideal vision of hope for the future. - Kei Ito Atomic Traces
Kei's billboard, Infertile American Dream, is accompanied by an online exhibition curated by Liz Faust, entitled Atomic Traces.
Atomic Traces Atomic Traces is an online exhibition about the stages of nuclear power and weapons and their inevitable destruction they will cause. The exhibition looks at these stages in the form of a house. Nuclear waste resides in the basement; stored away hidden yet felt. Nuclear explosions live on the ground floor, the most visible of the three. Finally, radiation masquerades as the roof of the building, invisible and poisoning the occupants. The image and symbol of a house is applied to nuclear here because both houses and nuclear energy/ weapons are actively planned and constructed by people, neither exists in nature. Houses are a part of the history of the landscape. They are like people, they have their own histories, personalities, charms, and faults; they can be fixed or broken. They are individual, yet the same. They are their own class of things, an inanimate species. In today’s current climate, landscapes and cultures all are at risk of being annihilated. - Atomic Traces is curated by Liz Faust |
^ Billboard #14: (Bill)board
Posting Info
Artist: Peter Hoffmeister
Sponsor: Lamar Outdoor Advertising and individual donors Posting Dates: October 23, 2017 Location: 174th Street and Broadway, New York, NY Press Release
|
(Bill)boardWith (Bill)board, I transform the back of a twenty-dollar bill, creating an image
flexible enough to accommodate simultaneous associations. This project began with the idea that paper currency is a type of public space, in that it is an entity that hypothetically facilitates cooperation and exchange between individuals. However, the value paper money represents is a double-edged sword; it is a force that can be harnessed for the benefit of a majority, or the greed of a minority. It is not ironic that the back of the twenty-dollar bill features an idealized image of the White House—given the incredible amount of money in politics today—an image of prestige whose only purpose it would seem is to bolster patriotism like a cheap history lesson. In a climate where many feel disoriented by an onslaught of caustic politics and oppressive economics, it is not hard to find contradictions. But voting in elections is not the only way to have a societal impact. In the struggle to uproot an immoral and unethical system, voting with our dollars is another possibility that holds real power. To expand upon this idea, I developed a companion piece called Withdraw Your Support. It consists of an unlimited edition of fake twenty-dollar bill “sizzle cards,” but instead of using its reverse as a space for advertising, I printed “Withdraw Your Support.” The assumed monetary value of the fake bill is replaced by a message meant to call upon the public consciousness. These will be continually dropped on sidewalks in the vicinity of (Bill)board and in New York City generally, where unsuspecting passersby will encounter them. I plan to continue spreading these for years to come, as an ongoing project. If you would like to spread some in your neighborhood, please send your address to the email below, and I will provide you with a free kit. WithdrawYourSupport@protonmail.com --Peter Hoffmeister Supplementary InformationHoffmeister's billboard encourages viewers to examine the ways we use currency and participate in our financial system, and asks us to reconsider whether our behaviors are aligned with our values. Below is some additional information which may aid in that inquiry.
What is a Credit Union? What Is Bitcoin? Cyptocurrencies other than Bitcoin The Top 50 Cryptocurrencies Community Currencies: Kenya Community Currencies: Ithaca Documentaries about the Financial System |
^ Billboard #13: Bliss
Posting Info
Artist: Conor Doherty
Sponsor: Lamar Outdoor Advertising and individual donors Posting Dates: March 3, 2017 Location: E Fordham Rd & Decatur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458 Press Release |
BlissBliss is from a series of images inspired by sea level rise due to global warming, and our general apathy towards (and willful ignorance about) the issue.
We are all aware that this is going on, yet we all continue to live our lives very much in the same way and continue to do next to nothing to slow down or reverse the damage being done to the planet. The balloons emerge from the water as if the ocean has suddenly covered something or someone who was there, and who was not meant to be covered up by the water. The cluster of balloons—a symbol of innocence, whimsy and happiness—combined with the literal presence of the rising sea serves two purposes. It is a visual reminder of the global climate change crisis that is rapidly unfolding before our eyes, and of our un-willingness to treat it with urgency. At the same time the image for some viewers is meant to be perceived as nothing more than a “cool image.” The meaning will be lost on those who are confronted with the evidence but are unwilling to give it time and thought: the exact mind-set that this image is an embodiment of. |
^ Billboard #12: "5"
Posting InfoArtist: Bang Luu
Sponsor: Lamar Outdoor Advertising, The New York Community Trust and individual donors Posting Dates: December 12, 2016 Location: Broadway and 174th Street, New York, NY 10033 Press Release |
"5"Breast cancer is well-known and well-documented with a social movement advocating research and treatment. Nonetheless, public comprehension of cancer is limited, and the actions that can be taken to prevent, detect, and treat cancer are still not well understood by the public. The pink ribbon and other products are used as uncontroversial symbols that both raise awareness about important medical conditions but also can shelter people from the complexities of the disease. The symbols are stand-ins for aspects of cancer’s intricacies and terrors.
My own mother’s battle with cancer inspired 5. Her death left a vacancy in my heart, a void I could not and would not wish to fill. I have been confused by the sharpness of these feelings, the sense that her departure was a thing unto itself, a memory outlined by crime tape, which it would be an outrage to remove. I have since been generating a lot of artwork that reflects my situation positively, which I hope engages and educates viewers with illustrated biological imagery and emphasizes the importance of regular checkups and preventive measures. I focus on exploring grief and, ultimately, healing wounds developed from tragedy. My work is aimed at helping those with similar experiences to be aware of supports and feel less alone. --Bang Luu |
Information about Breast Cancer & Screening
American Cancer Society
Prevent Cancer Foundation
National Breast Cancer Foundation
Komen Foundation
Detailed Factsheets about Breast Cancer
http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003090-pdf.pdf
http://preventcancer.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Breast-Cancer-Fact-Sheet-2013.pdf
Prevent Cancer Foundation
National Breast Cancer Foundation
Komen Foundation
Detailed Factsheets about Breast Cancer
http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003090-pdf.pdf
http://preventcancer.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Breast-Cancer-Fact-Sheet-2013.pdf
^ Billboard #11: HOODS
Posting Info |
HOODS |
|
Artist: John Edmonds
Sponsor: Lamar Outdoor Advertising, The New York Community Trust and individual donors Posting Dates: Sept 12 - Nov 21, 2016 Location: 252 W. 29th Street (bw 7th and 8th Ave), New York, NY 10001 Press Release
|
"The HOODS series started out originally as a way to talk about my own feelings of
reclusiveness and exhaustion—a self-portrait that was essentially about covering, shielding and isolating oneself. As the series progressed, I began to realize that the topics I started to address were much larger than myself. I became more and more interested in how the photographs were essentially pictures of an unidentifiable subject—and how I could use the psychology of color as a way to allude to the mutability of emotion, identity and complexity of bodies. It is this paradox of hypervisibility and invisibility that I am interested in with the HOODS series—the microaggression of misidentification and how one relates to another. Photographing hoods—an article of clothing that many understand as presumably “urban” and masculine—allows me the idiosyncratic agenda of looking mainly at a surface, while trying to closer to what is underneath." --John Edmonds |
^ Billboard #10: New Perfumes
Posting InfoArtist: Rachel Stern
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor and individual donors. Post Date: February 26 - April 4, 2016 Location: 181st Street and Broadway, New York, NY Press Release |
New Perfumes"Is it possible to describe scent with an image? To translate the intoxication and immersive experience of smell to the distancing experience of sight? In the marketing of commercial perfumes we have seen a wide array of attempts to communicate just this. From luxurious materials, foods, and locations to beautiful bodies and celebrity faces scent is sold through the promise of the experience that will accompany it. In this billboard project titled “New Perfumes” the image of scent is broken down into a stark symbology. A giant nose is bombarded by an army of hands holding perfume bottles and atomizers. The implied smell is conflated and overwhelming. The bodies (nose, and hands) included are isolated and cloaked, their gender is neither present nor relevant. Here smell is implied not through the imagined experience delivered by the character of the perfume but by the actual moment and action of smelling. "
-- Rachel Stern |
^ Billboard #9: Look Up!
Posting InfoArtist: Rico Washington, Elizabeth Hamby, Shino Yanagawa
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor and individual donors. Post Date: October 5 - November 16, 2015 Location: Flatbush and 7th Avenues, Brooklyn, NY Press Release
|
Look Up!Everybody has a story. New York City has an estimated eight million of them. In a bustling metropolis synonymous with change and chance, it’s not uncommon for dynamic stories of triumph and tribulation to share space on the same constricted sidewalk. New York City public housing has long embodied each of these intangibles and much more.
Yet throughout the course of our day, we often pass by these marginalized communities constructed on super blocks. Informed by pejorative news media narratives, we walk with haste and avert our eyes from the towering edifices that have become its hallmark and the people that inhabit them. As many of Brooklyn’s neighborhoods are experiencing a seismic shift in demographics, visual artist Elizabeth Hamby and collaborative journalist-photographer duo Rico Washington and Shino Yanagawa present Look Up!, an amalgamation of media and counter narratives that serves as a lens for recontextualizing New York City's public housing communities. At the intersection of their respective art projects, Alphabet City and We The People: The Citizens of NYCHA in Pictures + Words, Look Up! offers denizens of the city an alternate appraisal of these vibrant communities and its residents - often devalued and viewed as undesirable. Each of the four shapes featured on the Look Up! billboard is indicative of a specific architecture utilized in a particular housing project in Brooklyn. Superimposed with images from members of the public housing community, each shape corresponds with the story of a former/ current resident from the respective housing project. Melding oral histories with the concept of architecture as language, this collaboration presents itself as a unique opportunity for Brooklyn and the city at large to reexamine itself and redefine its neighborhoods beyond the unjust stereotypes that have long stigmatized them. View the four stories below. Viewers can also download the Aurasma app on your smartphone or tablet, follow our aura at LookUpNYC, focus the camera lens on the Look Up! Billboard located at Flatbush and 7th Avenues in Brooklyn, and unlock a special video from the project. An complementary exhibition related to this collaboration is currently on view as part of the Affordable New York exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York through February 2016. |
Jessie Hilliard: Marcus Garvey Houses / Brownsville, Brooklyn / Est. 1975
|
|
Nelson George: Samuel J. Tilden Houses / Brownsville, Brooklyn / Est. 1961
|
|
Susie Jones: Vandalia Houses / East New York, Brooklyn / Est. 1983
|
|
Jamel Shabazz: Red Hook Houses / Red Hook, Brooklyn / Est. 1933
|
|
^ Billboard #8: Reach
Posting Info16Artist: Julia Weist
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor and individual donors. Special thanks to Stefan Keidel, Kyle Triplett and Meredith Mann Post Date: June 12, 2015 -July 16, 2015 Location: 107-37 Queens Blvd, Forest Hills, NY Press Release
|
ReachIn 2015, Weist set out to find a space on the Internet that was empty and a single word that would lead people there. The Reach project shares this word with the 123,484 weekly viewers of a billboard on Queens Boulevard, and those who see imagery of the artwork.
A search for the word used in the Reach project results in only one webpage, a site created by the artist. Viewers are invited to visit the site, but are asked to never use the word as text anywhere else online, lest they undo the page's unique singularity. The site includes a PHP process that writes a status to the web server each time a visit occurs. The server is queried by an Internet-enabled circuit board which in turn runs a command to an Internet-enabled outlet. To put it simply, when the Reach webpage is visited a lamp turns on in the artist’s home.
|
^ Billboard #7: Keep Calm
Posting InfoArtist: Margeaux Walter
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor; Citizens Committee of NYC; and individual donors. Post Date: Jan 13, 2015 Location: Greenpoint Ave and 46th Street, Queens, NY Press Release
|
Keep CalmThe artist has chosen to work with the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On” to create a dialogue that addresses the overlap between individuality and commerce as well as the various guises of advertising and propaganda. The slogan originated in the British Stationary Office during WWII and was created as war propaganda but never distributed. Today the slogan has been re-appropriated as a marketing tool to such an extent that the lines between individual expression and propaganda can be blurred. Walter’s image reveals a collage of these posters. Upon closer examination, the viewer will also notice a camouflaged papier-mâché figure in the posters.
In conjunction with the billboard, the artist invites people to tweet their own Keep Calm messages with the hashtag #keepcalm14x48. These tweets will be made into postcards and distributed along Greenpoint Ave, and at Ave Coffee House. By giving community members the ability to personalize this slogan, the artist turns a commercial transaction into a personal one, uniting the voices within the community. Participate in this dialogue, and grab a postcard with a message from another community member while you’re at it! |
^ Billboard #6: Window Plane
Posting InfoArtist: Desiree Leary
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor; Citizens Committee of NYC; and individual donors. Post Date: Sep 8 - Dec 1, 2014 Location: W 174th Street and Broadway, New York, NY Press Release
|
Window PlaneWINDOW PLANE BILLBOARD presents a fragmented narrative of an implicit crash involving a toy airplane, the reflection of a truck, and a cracked window. Incorporating elements not uncommon to the space surrounding a billboard, the real, represented, and implied skies skew the viewer’s environment when looking up. This billboard is part of the artist's SINGLESPACE project, a series of diptych images which she shows and distributes in various formats including postcards, prints, a poster, and a pocket-sized field index.
In effort to create an awareness of safe behavior as one moves through space, the artist will be trading stickers of the WINDOW PLANE image in exchange for promises of safe behavior. The artist encourages you to apply these reflective stickers to bikes, helmets, skateboards, bumpers, and beyond! |
^ Billboard #5: Toco Man/I Need A Miracle
Posting InfoArtist: Santiago Mostyn
Partners: #Wallplay Gallery Post Dates: Mar 5 - , 2014 Location: 118 Orchard St at Delancey, New York, NY Press Release |
Toco ManToco Man is an image made on the north coast of Trinidad, during a trip I made there to re-photograph all the houses I grew up in. The man in the image, Anthony Mulligan, lives in the shack behind him, and told me a long story of his on-going war with his family members, who've apparently been trying to kill him for years. The slogans on the wall are his semi-literate attempt to highlight corruption in the local government. Mr. Mulligan told me he believed I had been sent by God to take his picture and share his plight with the rest of the world, so it seemed fitting to put him up on a billboard in New York City.
I Need A MiracleThe language of images – what images can say culturally, what biases or desires they engender – is important in my work, and more recently written language as an extension of that, so I've always been interested in what billboards can do. They're emblematic of urban culture, but most of us only ever get to relate to them as passive consumers of their content.
So putting this phrase – I Need a Miracle – into public space, especially in New York (home of the catch phrase) seems transformative for a number of reasons. Almost all billboard texts point to the viewer and try to berate or seduce: You should do this! Who do you think you are! Get with the program! But the 'I' in this Miracle phrase is read by the viewer as both their own voice and the unknown narrator. There's a relationship set up on equal terms, which is unusual in public space, as it isn't a voice designed to produce desire. The phrase also means different things to different people. My relationship to it was seeing a gutter punk use it on a cardboard sign, asking for change. I've been in his position as a travelling punk myself and felt that the possibility for empathy – how we strangers can stay linked as communities through language – will help us all stand on less biased ground. |
^ Billboard #4: Static
Posting InfoArtist: Ken Millington
Sponsors: Lamar Outdoor; Citizens Committee of NYC; and individual donors. Post Dates: 10/30/13 - 07/31/14 Location: Grand Concourse & 149th Street, Bronx, NY Sound Fossils
|
Static FossilAs the analogue switch-off reaches completion, our televisions will solely derive signals from digital services. Accompanying this transition will be the disappearance of the familiar image of television static. This technological relic was the result of a lost broadcast signal. A weaker signal was immediately subject to interference. A disturbance that found its source in local weather, lightning, solar flares, signal leakage and even the residue of the Big Bang, namely the Cosmic Microwave Background Emission (CMB). In that in-between space, the polluted signal, we see the echo of the origin of the universe painted in the phosphors of red, green and blue (RGB).
Giant advertising billboards, with their affinity to television, are an appropriate larger- than- life venue for this concept. With the abundance of vacant billboards around the city, these displays could be seen as television screens that are turned off. Placing an image of static upon one site would amount to turning on one TV but not broadcasting anything recognizable. It provides a banner for the passing of an archaic technology. The image is an information landscape. Originally painted in acrylic on parachute cloth at the scale of 4ft 8in x 16 ft, the work was photographically reproduced for the billboard, a translation that mirrors the analogue to digital conversion. Rethinking contemporary landscape painting, the work documents the individual attempt to engage the sublime quality of nature unseen, the universal forces at work outside of the borders of the visual spectrum. |
Archive
Check out earlier postings.
