Artist Michael Rakowitz came up with a clever way to camp out on an urban street, make your tent look like it’s a covered car!
He writes:
(P)LOT questions the occupation and dedication of public space and encourages reconsiderations of “legitimate” participation in city life. Contrary to the common procedure of using municipal parking spaces as storage surfaces for vehicles, (P)LOT proposes the rental of these parcels of land for alternative purposes. The acquisition of municipal permits and simple payment of parking meters could enable citizens to, for example, establish temporary encampments or use the leased ground for different kinds of activities, such as temporary gardens, outdoor dining, game playing, etc. A first initiative for this re-dedication is realized through the conversion of ordinary car covers to portable tents for use as living units or leisure spaces. Ranging from a common sedan to a luxurious Porsche or Lexus, the tents enable a broadcast of desire within the marginalized space of need.
Here’s a great site specific piece by Supakitch. It looks like a sweet bear during the day, but at night when the green subway entrance light comes on, it looks totally sinister.
For their latest mission, 20 Improv Everywhere agents personally welcomed home total strangers at JFK airport. Grabbing first and last names from car driver signs, they greeted strangers with personalized posters, flowers, balloons, and a 10-foot wide banner reading, “Welcome Back.”
Dave Hoffer, a creative director at Frog Design, recently coined the term “Disruptive Realism” to describe much of what we post about on this blog. He introduces the term in the video above and then elaborates:
Disruptive Realism is an expression presented in an everyday context that disrupts peoples perceptions about different things. Expression can mean many things and it a way it’s art but it’s also much more expansive a term than just art.
Banksy’s graffiti looks real enough that you might do a double take looking at it. It draws you into the content which is disruptive…like a little girl flying a refrigerator kite in New Orleans.
The other two examples are even more non-conventional than the word Art implies. Most people hear the word art and they think of a painting in a museum. Because Bruno Taylor’s work is an experience that involves physical designs like the swing set in the bus stop, the viewer is no longer viewing, they’re interacting and the videos he takes of people enjoying the installations are, in fact, part of the art. So this example is difficult to define, but definitely real and definitely disruptive.
Improv Everywhere is one part performance art and one part massive, crowdsourced goof. People get together (often strangers) to collaborate on a kind of a joke on the unsuspecting and unknowing non-participants. In a way, it’s almost an anti-terrorism…Humorism? But again, very real and very disruptive.
The amount of media coverage the Fake New York Times stunt received was staggering. It spread to news outlets all over the globe like wildfire. The chief organizers of the event, Andy Bichlbaum from The Yes Men and Steve Lambert from the Anti-Advertising Agency appeared on CNN the day after the storm to discuss the project.
This is something that happened spontaneously during the Phillies World Series parade celebration and is not an orchestrated prank, but if it was, it would be awesome. (Though it’s pretty damn cool as it is.)
From the YouTube description:
We snuck out into the middle of Broad Street to snap a pic in front of City Hall and all the crowds. When Will raised his hands for the picture, cheers erupted. So he continued to repeat the gesture, getting wild response from the crowd on both sides of the street up and down the street as far as we could see. We couldn’t have planned this if we practiced and practiced. I wish the video was longer.
Montreal group Les Fourmis came up with a clever use for campaign signs after the recent Canadian election– turn them into birdhouses and put them up around the city. I wonder how many millions of campaign signs there are in the US right now heading to a landfill?
Urban Prankster covers pranks, hacks, participatory art, flash mobs, and other creative endeavors that take place in public places in cities across the world. It is edited by Charlie Todd.
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