(View it larger on YouTube)
edited by Matt Adams / “The Dogs Were Let Out by Whom?” song by Tyler Walker
For Improv Everywhere’s latest mission, over 2,000 people walked “invisible dogs” down the streets of Brooklyn on a Sunday afternoon. The leashes were on loan from the current owner of 51 Bergen Street, the factory space where the invisible dog toy was invented in the 1970s. Participants of all ages spread out from Red Hook to Brooklyn Heights, very seriously walking their very silly dogs.
The Yes Men strike again in this sequel to last November’s Fake New York Times. This time although the paper is a fake, the facts in the paper are real. The action is designed to draw attention to climate change as world leaders meet today at the UN.
Read the Fake NY Post online.
The Spanish group Left Hand Rotation decided to bring the spam problem to the real world. They made postcards with the SPAM logo and handed them out on the street and stuffed them in mailboxes around Madrid. Here’s a video:
The Putting Lot is the awesome new putt putt course built in an abandoned lot in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Their site explains:
Each hole is designed by a different team of artists and architects around themes of urban sustainability. Playing a round at the lot is an interactive experience, requiring golfers to step inside the artist’s visions and the ideas that have inspired them. Through the transformation of the lot, the construction of the holes, and a series of events held in the public area, we hope to provide a forum for discussing urban sustainability in a new context.
Ghost Hole, pictured above, is a hole created by artist Ben Roosevelt. Ben describes the hole:
To make my part of the course, the exact area of the vacant lot in Brooklyn where my hole would be built was photographed prior to any cleaning or building. Then the photographs were used to make an outdoor, high-traffic decal for the actual playing surface of the hole. A player could look down and see what was in the exact spot before building: trash, debris, rocks, etc.
Cool!
This project happened six years ago, but this video just popped up on the net last month. In August of 2003 the Madagascar Institute had a massive “condiment war” in DUMBO Brooklyn.
Daniel Maurer was there and wrote up an awesome first hand account. Here’s an excerpt:
There were supposed to be four armies: Madagascar Institute, the Toyshop Collective, the Greenpoint-based art collective WAMP, and “the bloodthirsty public, banded together in an Irregular Militia.” (Several civilians also posed as pacifists, meditating in the Lotus position even as they were pelted.) The teams were demarked by the color of their armbands (civies in yellow) and stationed in opposite corners, but as soon as the schnitzel hit the fan, all was chaos.
Noise makers and blow horns filled the air, as did a dizzying plethora of condiments. Suddenly I felt like I was in Saving Private Ryan. Men and women in plastic coveralls ran around spraying each other, or throwing chunks of hot dog, dough, pretty much anything edible. A woman wheeled an ice cream cart into the center of the staging area and pulled a hose out of it, spraying everyone around her. Another combatant hid her condiments in a baby carriage disguised as an elephant. Someone with a Super Soaker pumped vinegar into my eye.
From the rooftop of an adjacent 10-story building, people threw balloons full of god-knows-what onto the street below. At one point I looked up to see an operative rappelling off the side of the building. The figure stopped halfway down to drop a cluster of condiment bombs. All the while I ran around squeezing my wimpy squirt bottle of ketchup, feeding off the thrill of soiling total strangers while trying not to slip on a lava bed of spent ammo
(thanks Kevin)
Prankster Rob Cockerham recently spray-painted a bunch of stuffed animals brown and left them for dead on the sides of roads around Sacramento. Why? Because he’s hilarious. See his documentation.
French prankster Remi Gaillard in a snail costume, in the street. ’nuff said.
Posterchild recently added some accurate plant labels to abandoned planter boxes in Toronto. He writes:
What are we sowing? What have we planted? It seems like we forget unless it’s labeled.
This is an attempt to highlight the “obvious-yet-invisible”, to encourage/shame municipal authorities into doing some real gardening with their many derelict planter boxes.
It is also meant to inspire Guerrilla Gardeners to take action of their own!!
I’m really digging this public art project by Anthony Gormley. He explains it best in the video above. Here’s some more info:
This summer, sculptor Antony Gormley invites you to help create an astonishing living monument. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. If you’re selected, you can use your time on the plinth as you like. One & Other is open to anyone and everyone from any corner of the UK. As long as you’re 16 or over and are living or staying in the UK, you can apply to be part of this unforgettable artistic experiment.
You can play your part in making this idea a reality – either by volunteering yourself, by telling others about it, or by experiencing it online or in the square itself.
What’s even cooler is that you can watch what’s happening live via webcam. It’s streaming 24 hours. Right now it’s raining in London and they are switching between two participants using a crain. Watch the live stream.
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