After slicing off Shakira’s skull on his visit from London, the Decapitator teamed up with Poster Boy for a crappy collaboration. The ad-attacking artists reworked some phone booth spots in Bushwick, putting up posters that, along with Posterchild’s public urination notices, are defining New York’s scatological street art scene. |Public Ad Campaign|

Photos by Public Ad Campaign

A group of Berlin-based artists staged a street advertising takeover recently, replacing bus shelter ads between Alexanderplatz and Hermannplatz. Artists including Boxi, Brad Downey, Evol, and Filippo Minelli put up 19 original poster, while Zasd went further. The pseudonymous artist posted a diagram of his “acupuncture attempts” on a nearby shopping mall. |Ekosystem|

Photos by Timo Stammberger

Combining guerilla gardening and illegal ad takeovers, two Toronto artists cut and fold billboard and flyer ads into planters.

Photo by Spacing Magazine

Somewhat surprisingly, the Museum of Modern Art backed a recent takeover of illegal outdoor advertising. Jordan Seiler of Public Ad Campaign spotted a group of teenagers with the MoMA Red Studio summer program pasting their artwork over illegal NPA ads on a construction shed in Manhattan. The takeover was conducted with the landlord’s permission, but it’s still shocking since MoMA doesn’t like people messing with public ads, at least not their own. Earlier this year, the museum fired its creative agency, The Happy Corp, after CEO Doug Jaeger hired Posterboy to remix their Atlantic-Pacific Avenue subway station campaign. Still, it’s a great lesson in public space policy for the kids. But MoMA shouldn’t be surprised if the fledgling ad activists take aim at their own use of the marketing medium, especially their wildpostings of questionable legality.

Photos by Public Ad Campaign

On Saturday, Public Ad Campaign’s Jordan Seiler organized a massive ad space takeover in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The target: NPA’s illegal outdoor billboards. They’re the main company that wheatpastes up promotional posters for various brands or what’s known in the industry as wild postings. According to Seiler, the Department of Buildings informed him that many of the locations operated by the outdoor advertising outfit are unlawful and although there’s occasional arrests, the city mostly ignores the law breaking executions. So starting around 11AM, a total of 26 whitewashers (including this very editor, shout out to Team 10: JustSeeds & AnerA), were broken into groups and provided with paint, orange worker vests, and maps. In total we covered 120 of the 132 locations planned in Chelsea, West Village, Chinatown, East Village, Lower East Side, and Williamsburg.
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