These Boots Were Made for Walking in the Rain, Protesting Pollution

Madrid’s art crew Luzinterruptus had staged this modest intervention Without Pollution, At Least for a While to celebrate the first of their city’s rainfall which helped to temporarily rinse out their industrially poisoned air. They would like to remind you that “Madrid blatantly violates European legislation on air quality” and those in power do not care. So, so many glowing little boots took an upside down jaunt in the grassy meadows and hills of Parque del Oeste. Kudos on a delightful light art protest and its fifty little kicks into the face of this big issue.

Madrid’s light-art street interventionists Luzinterruptus return with a Winged Tree decked out in glowing sanitary pads. This is a response to misleading advertising that pitches the feminine products as “ethereal, immaculate, delicate, odorless and beautiful” winged creatures instead of what they are — uncomfortable, synthetic wads you have to shove down your pants over your menstruating hole if you don’t plug it. Read more »

Madrid’s art troupe Luzinterruptus hung 1000 lit envelopes filled with poems at La Casa de América for a poetry festival. Sure, this is more gentle of an intervention than their recent unauthorized installations of lit rogue bike lanes and glowing body bags of sex dolls. Callous cynics: Lighten up! Read more »

Light-Up Portable Bars From Luzinterruptus

Madrid’s light-art crew of Luzinterruptus staged an intervention of empathy recently. Like the Chinese workers selling alcohol in the street at night in “an improvised bar fashion, on fruit boxes recovered from the trash,” they built their own Portable No-Name Bar. They’re blinged out with red mood lighting and LED lights punched into cardboard signs for a touch of “permanence.” The free beer wasn’t a bad idea either.

Come September, Dirt Aglow Anew

Spotting Madrid’s construction trenches are 200 lit Chinese cocktail umbrellas. Street intervention crew Luzinterruptus made a filthy heap of earth and trash near a cluster of bookshops and gambling dens all luminous. See their latest: Come September.

One of the wittier public space-hacking vandals, SpY, sent us word of his latest “intervention.” The Spanish artist painted an enormous “LEÉ” (translated: “Read it”) across the facade of an abandoned building in Madrid. Watch the bonus video of him in action below. Read more »

After turning a skatepark into a Pac-Man painting, SpY continues public intervening, installing his art recently in Rotterdam and New York. Creating what at first sometimes appears a senseless prank, the Madrid-based street artist appropriates familiar street settings for his commentary on surveillance, police and the economy. And where construction cones and police tape offer are too subtle, SpY picks up a bucket of paint, offering satellite watchers a bold reminder.

Photos via SpY

While traveling in Madrid, a member of Queens-based Smart Crew faces the dilemma of sidebusting or continuing to roam the city in search of empty space to paint. |Smart Crew|

Nearly 30 billboards along a highway leading into Madrid were crossed out in paint recently. Although reminiscent of the New York Street Advertising Takeover, which whitewashed illegal ads for artists to decorate, it’s not clear what the motives are for this anti-advertising action.

Photos by Alberto de Pedro

Not surprisingly, a bull seriously gored matador Israel Lancho after being taunted and stabbed repeatedly in Madrid yesterday. |Big Picture|

Photo by Daniel Ochoa de Olza/Associated Press