Skip to main content

Billboard Bandits, 1983 - 2000

 File — Multiple Containers

Comment from Mary Dery

Promotional materials, correspondence, media coverage of “billboard bandits” such as The Billboard Liberation Front (BLF), Cicada Corps of Artists, BUGA UP (Australian), Ron English, etc. whose guerrilla media criticism takes the form of clandestine, illegal alterations of billboards (and other advertisements in public spaces) to subversive effect, often in the service of anti-advertising or anti-consumerist agendas. - Smashing the Image Factory, user’s manual on the theory and practice of billboard banditry. - Notes for, and final typescript draft of, my seminal essay on “subvertising,” which includes a mention of billboard banditry. - “The Billboard Jungle,” Mother Jones, May/June 2000 - Publisher’s catalogue page for Advertising Outdoors: Watch This Space! - Utne Reader article, “The Billboard Commandos,” about billboard banditry - “Billboard Corrections,” article on BB by noted art historian and scholar Douglas Kahn (author of a respected study of proto-jammer John Heartfield, whose savage photomontages mocking the Nazis forced him to flee the Third Reich, to England). - Buzz Books’s “anti-advertising” advertising campaign (together with letter to my then literary agent, Laurie Fox, who forwarded it to me) - LAT article on BB - Factsheet Five listing of ‘zine “about public space” - Gallery press releases and Harper’s magazine article about billboard-related project by artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres - Articles on Reverend Calvin Butts’s campaign against billboards targeting African-American community, specifically Harlem. - SF Chronicle article about defacement of billboards in Berkeley by anti-lactose (!) activists - Articles about controversy over artist’s use of billboards to critique Coors beer company. - CoEvolution Quarterly article on how to alter a billboard by “William Board” - High Performance performance art magazine article on AIDS activist group Act Up’s billboard banditry - “Billboard High Jinks” article by Brad Wieners - AP article on BB - “Quincentennial Capers” article on BB by Eva Skylark from unknown publications - Article from unknown source about the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)’s use of billboards to counter homophobic messaging of the Religious Right. - SF Progress article on artists’ use of billboard to send message critical of the newsmedia (“Newsy Billboard Beckons [sic] Passerbys”) - “Take Me, Hurt Me, Smoke Me,” John Leo, Spy magazine critiquing and satirizing Newport cigarette ads - “No on 65 Signs Stuck with a New Message,” article from unknown paper about “environmental guerrillas” who altered a billboard to send a message critiquing Chevon’s role as a “major California polluter.” - Newspaper item about Activists Against Sexist Pigs defacing billboard for misogynist comedian Andrew Dice Clay’s new album - Article on BB from Community Murals magazine, Spring 1983 - “Paper Cups Work Best,” Off Our Backs article on “urban redecoration” of offending billboards - “Whose Views?” article from unknown publication about photographer, conceptual artist, and billboard bandit Larry Sultan - Upfront article on politically motivated “streetworks” - “Anti-Rape Group Protests Egg Advertisement,” (SF?) Examiner - Winter 1984 Community Murals magazine feature on “billboard corrections” - Announcement for Cooper Union lecture, “Strip Tease(rs): A History of Outdoor Advertising in America” - Packet of various (SF?) articles about billboard defacement and “refacement” - Large (loose) collection of photos/media images of altered or defaced billboards, clipped and photocopied by Craig Baldwin, who gave them to me when I interviewed him in San Francisco in 1995. (Note: That interview is included with the interview cassettes sent in another mailing.)

Dates

  • Creation: 1983 - 2000

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Extent

2 folders

Language of Materials

From the Collection: English

Repository Details

Part of the University of Iowa Special Collections Repository

Contact:
Special Collections Department
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City IA 52242 IaU
319-335-5921
319-335-5900 (Fax)