Projects tagged "Advertising & Consumerism"

7 Days of Garbage
Practitioner:
Gregg Segal
Date:
Jul 10 2014
Gregg Segal -- a California-based artist who is known for using the medium of photography to explore culture with the "sensibility of a sociologist" -- asked family, friends, neighbors and other acquaintances to save their trash and recyclables for a week and then lie down and be photographed in it:
Television Commercial for Communism
Practitioner:
TBWA \ Viet Nam
Date:
Jan 1 2011
Imagine for a brief moment, that the world’s last five remaining communist countries decided to unite forces and hire the world’s top advertising agencies to re-brand and create a resurgence in the ideologies of Communism?
José Bové dismantles a McDonald's
Practitioner:
Andreja Kulunčić, Ahmet Ögüt
Date:
Aug 12 1999
José Bové, a sheep farmer/activist in Aveyron in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France, is a modern day Astérix, a mythical Gaul who drubbed foreign intruders centuries ago. In Bové's case, the intruder was McDonald's, the American fast food chain.
A Legal Guide Helps Artists Make and Protect Protest Art
Practitioner:
Harvard University’s Cyberlaw Clinic and metaLAB
Date:
Jan 22 2018
Harvard University’s Cyberlaw Clinic and metaLAB have created a free guide for making protest art while navigating intellectual property law.
Brandalism
Practitioner:
Brandalism
Date:
Nov 27 2015
Brandalism, an organization out of the UK that aims to reclaim public spaces from advertisers, used Black Friday to protest "partner" brands to the COP21 Climate Conference. Anonymous artists contributed subvertisements that criticized these brand for their hypocrisy in saying they are advocates for the environment when more often than not they are the worst contributors to the problem.
Dove Real Beauty Campaign
Practitioner:
Dove
Date:
Apr 6 2014
The Photoshop action — a downloadable file that applies an action with a single click — is aimed at art directors who may be creating such ads. The action, which was disseminated on Reddit and other places where Dove thought such art directors might visit, promised to add a skin glow effect, but actually reverted the image to its original state.
Museum of Capitalism
Practitioner:
Andrea Steves and Timothy Furstnau
Date:
Jun 17 2017
Imagine a world without capitalism.
Honest Shop
Practitioner:
Grizedale Arts
Date:
Jan 1 2012
A village shop in Coniston is stocked by local producers with everything from farm meat and vegetables to paintings and knitted goods. The produce is all homemade and brought in by local suppliers. Customers are invited to buy goods in the shop for an 'honest' price, there are guideline price tags attached to the items by the producer but customers are expected to pay what they consider an honest, suitable price for the item.
Dead Dove Publishing
Practitioner:
ArmoredSuperHeavy
Date:
May 5 2021
User @ArmoredSuperHeavy on Twitter recently posted a master document detailing their explorations into bookbinding, fanfiction preservation, and the online gift economy. Their bookbinding venture, named Dead Dove Publishing, is a project that seeks to preserve and legitimize fanworks and celebrate the fandom gift economy. The document explains their actions and the work they have done since they began two years ago.
FTSE - A British Anti-Capitalist Rapper
Practitioner:
FTSE
Date:
Aug 26 2015
"FTSE" is Birmingham-born producer and rapper Sam Manville. As an anti-captialist, he though it would be funny to take the name of the British stock market index (Financial Times and Stock Exchange), but he also jokes the acronym stands for "Fuck The System, Ennit.”
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir
Practitioner:
Reverend Billy
Date:
May 25 1950
Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir is a New York City based radical performance community, with 50 performing members and a congregation in the thousands. We are wild anti-consumerist gospel shouters and Earth loving urban activists who have worked with communities on four continents defending community, life and imagination. Our Devils over the 15 years of our "church" have remained the same: Consumerism and Militarism.
Vangardist HIV+ Magazine
Practitioner:
Vangardist
Date:
May 4 2015
HIV is still among the top 10 leading causes of death in the world, ranking sixth with around 1.5 million deaths each year. Around 35 million people are currently infected with HIV, and cases are worryingly on the rise—it is far from old news. Determined to change this, a magazine has embarked on a bold new campaign in which 3,000 copies will be printed using ink mixed with HIV-infected blood.
Los Palcos del Descubridor (The discoverer's box seats)
Practitioner:
José Aburto and Sebastian Burga
Date:
Mar 1 2012
"Los Palcos del Descubridor" (The Discoverer's Box Seats) was a project created by Sebastian Burga and José Aburto in 2012 that consisted of a large-scale installation on the street and a media campaign on the Internet. The work simulated the upcoming construction of an apartment building that would replace Lima's Teatro Colón, a historical landmark.
Art, Activism, and the City: Illuminating Social Change
Practitioner:
Donkeys
Date:
Mar 13 2025
The creative fusion of art and activism in urban spaces has propelled the British collective Led by Donkeys into the spotlight, garnering millions of views for their interventions on social media. Their critical visual occupations - whether billboard messages during the day or large-scale projections at night - raise a compelling question: which medium holds the greater persuasive power?
Pop-Up Studio: Kids’ Campaign to Correct History
Practitioner:
Sam Durant and Elisa Harkins, UCLA
Date:
Mar 26 2017
Join other families in reimagining sports team mascots and logos that misrepresent Native American communities. Design a campaign for alternative names with the help of artists Sam Durant and Elisa Harkins, taking inspiration from the exhibition Jimmie Durham: At the Center of the World. Pop-Up Studio Families explore art and create together in lively workshops led by artists. These drop-in programs are designed for ages 5 and up.
Benetton 'Unhate' Campaign Ads: White House Issues Statement on Obama Kiss
Practitioner:
United Colors of Benetton
Date:
Nov 17 2011
It seems a lot of powerful people hate Benetton's new 'Unhate' Campaign ads. The recently unveiled images show world leaders like the Pope and U.S. President Barack Obama kissing their perceived enemies. On Thursday, the White House issued a statement condemning Benetton for its provocative campaign.
When Luxury Stores Decorate Their Riot Barricades With Protest Art
Practitioner:
Various Artists
Date:
Jun 22 2020
Three months ago, when New York government officials ordered nonessential businesses closed to slow the spread of coronavirus, high-end retailers sheathed their stores in plywood barriers, as though readying for civil unrest.
Soviet Army Monument - REDUX
Practitioner:
various activists
Date:
Feb 23 2014
Since the beginning of Bulgaria's transition to democracy, the monument’s meaning and future has been the subject of heated debates. Opponents to the monument aren’t happy about the presence of such a dominating foreign army monument in the country that is situated higher and more central than national symbols. In recent years, the monument has turned into a canvas for anonymous political statements on multiple occasions.
Whirl-Mart Ritual Resistance
Practitioner:
various activists
Date:
Apr 1 2001
"Whirl-Mart Ritual Resistance is a participatory experiment. It is art and action. It came into being in 2001 as a response to Adbusters magazine’s call for foolish action on the first of April. What began as a single happening in Troy, NY has over the course of a year evolved into a ritual activity that is performed across the U.S., and known around the world.
Looping! Finding Your Inner Child in Your Underwear on the Streets
Practitioner:
Matthew Silver, Fritz Donnelley
Date:
Jan 1 2014
What is looping? Somewhere in between art, activism, and wackiness is this liberating experience. Matthew Silver and Fritz Donnelley, two New York City based performance artists got lonely acting silly in their underwear in public. Knowing that there were enough free spirits to join them, they started "Looping" and invited everyone to join them.
Nadia Plesner v Commercialism
Practitioner:
Nadia Plesner
Date:
Feb 6 2013
Danish 26-year-old art student Nadia Plesner designed this T-shirt depicting a Darfurian child holding a Louis Vuitton handbag as commentary on global disparity as it relates to war, developing nations, commercialism, and media. In 2006, the fashion house sued Plesner for her appropriation of their trademark. The case was subsequently dismissed.
Mesmerizing Flesh: The Visceral Corporeality of Tamara Kostianovsky's Textile Sculptures
Practitioner:
Tamara Kostianovsky
Date:
Feb 3 2023
For artists exploring themes of violence towards humans and animals, there is a fine line between thoughtfully engaging and needlessly shocking the viewer; being sensationally explicit can turn people away while being tacit or innocuous may fail to make an impact.
Hijabizing Dolce & Gabbana
Practitioner:
Princess Hijab
Date:
Oct 18 2011
Princess Hijab is an anonymous female street artist working primarily in Paris, France. Her art centres on veiling the main characters of subway advertisements using black paint. Few facts are known about Princess Hijab.
A Call That Makes Change Approachable
Practitioner:
The Story of Stuff Project
Date:
Jul 11 2012
The Story of Stuff Project launches a new video. What is instructional, educational, and inspirational is a call for all the people in America to exercise their citizenship rather than their right to consume. Here is what Annie Leonard (co-founder and spokes person for the project) has to say about this new film:
EASY TO ASSEMBLE - Spain's Podemos Leftist Party Printed its Program as an Ikea Catalog so Voters Will Actually Read It
Practitioner:
Podemos
Date:
Jun 9 2016
Whether or not they follow politics, it’s fair to assume most people don’t actually read electoral programs. Podemos, Spain’s growing leftwing party, which got nearly 21% of the votes in last year’s elections, doesn’t think that’s good, so it adopted an unusual marketing approach to tackle that problem: it printed the program as an Ikea catalogue (pdf, link in Spanish).

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