John T. Unger proposes a simple open-source street art project, American Guernica. He urges people across the country to put up billboard-sized reproductions of Picasso's famous interpretation of the decimation of an ancient Basque city, sans text or other identifying information. "[I]f the painting is all that's seen, it forces the viewer to make an interpretation instead of being told what to think. Being told what to think is exactly what got Americans in trouble in the first place, no?" It's a great idea, albeit expensive. Since he made his initial post on it in October, I wonder if anyone has installed guerilla pieces anywhere...
(Via Collision Detection via reBlog.)
Hi Paul,
ReplyDeleteThanks for spreading the meme! I'd love to see Guernica billboards sprout all over the place, though it is definitely an expensive way of speaking one's mind.
Looking over your blog, it seems we have a lot of common interests. Definitely belongs in my RSS feed.
As far as whether anyone has installed Guerilla Guernicas yet: I was just doing a search to see who had linked to the project and found out that I have been (rather embarrassingly) scooped! Someone posted Guernica on a billboard at Sunset & Hollywood in LA way back in 2003. I guess that'll teach me to release an idea without googling the heck out of it. I'm still trying to figure out who actually did the billboard and whether it was guerilla or paid, but I'll post an update to my page as soon as I can find the info.