Vandalism |
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"We have initiated an innovative and covert campaign of guerrilla action
to subvert the forces of ugliness by exposing them for what they are on
their own territory."
- The Coalition to Raise Aesthetic Consciousness
Vandalism is a bit of a loaded term; people tend to think of the most brainless and ugly examples of the appropriated canvas and then extrapolate from there to condemn the entire genre. But vandalism can be beautiful, especially when what is being vandalized starts out ugly. You know those plant racks out in front of supermarkets? What if you showed up one day and found "Heinous Welsh Squash" and "Common Dickweed" for sale? Luther Blissett and Lester Green of San Luis Obispo, California conspired to invent some exotic plants and put them up for sale at the local Scolari's and Thrifty's. Not satisfied, they also changed around the letters on a local feed store's marquee, making spendid anagrams like "Phone That Tip: Watch 14 Dog Rapes" out of more ordinary bargain announcements. The really destructive vandalism, alas, is usually bought and paid-for, and protected by the powers-that-be. But if you want to interrupt pathological, media-simulated social interaction, you've come to the right place. A couple of Intel engineers managed to etch some graffiti directly onto the surface of one of the Pentium microprocessors. Takes a scanning electron microscope to catch sight of the message ("biLL Sux"), but that was enough to get the engineers canned. (Whoops! Turns out this was all a hoax - nice one though!) Vandalism can be used to make something ugly, but it can also be used to point out ugliness, or to replace it with art. The archetypical vandalism is the spraypainted graffiti, which at its best is very beautiful form of Art Sabotage indeed, and ought to be seen as a generous act of civic beautification when it occurs. A while back they put up an anti-vandalism billboard on a street near my home. Of course, the cause of civic uglification is promoted no better than by billboards themselves - advertising supplements that drop into the landscape like the cards that fall out of magazines. It's no surprise that vandals consider them fair game; I've never seen an even amateurly vandalized billboard that didn't look better than the original. Billboard Liberation, as it's being called, is attracting dedicated practitioners. Reports here and there indicate that it's popping up all over. And we highlight some great examples in our scrapbook. Adbusters has put together a brief guide for the prospective billboard improver that they call "Adding the Blemish of Truth." And Earth First! has adopted the process of monkeywrenching. The folks at Fortean Times have kept their fingers on the pulse of curious vandalism: Authorities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, were called to the scene to investigate when fifteen trees in a city park were fitted with doorknobs and locks. Residents of a Rio de Janeiro slum painted all of the buildings in their neighborhood a uniform pale green, perhaps to confuse police. An unusual case of widespread and engimatic asphalt embellishment involving Stanley Kubrick and Arnold Toynbee is worthy of mention. Creative and pleasantly pointless was the icon replacement at a mall in Sacramento. I'd be remiss not to include the beautiful Crop Circle phenomenon here somewhere. Here's art etched right on the heart of agriculture. Curious circles are appearing everywhere these days ("police have no suspects and know of no motive"). |
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