Brandalism Project

Introduction

Did you know that during the last Olympic Games in London an Olympic Brand Policy protected the « brand » of the Olympic Games ?

To protest against this brand brigade and in order to protect liberty, some street artists made art works in the streets of different towns in UK.

A project, named Brandalism was born, as a world game mixing « brand » and « vandalism ». This venture was collaborative and international : 24 artists from 8 countries worked on 37 spots in UK. They were working with activists, people from third sector and academic network during 8 months.

I'll start to explain the idea of Brandalism, and the project. In a second part, I'll show you what happened in London, by an example. And, finally, I'll talk about their protest against consumer society.

1. Brandalism : the term and the project

« Brandalism » is a notion theorized by Sean Tejaratchi in 1999 in his essay « Death, Phones, Scissors » published in his magazine Crap Hound.

Banksy, the famous londoner street artist, plagirized the main idea of Tejaratchi in his book Wall and Piece.

Brandalism is the action to re-use, re-create the spaces of advertisement in public space, without any permission, like advertising industry impose to us everyday.

The Brandalism crew want to re-invent 50 billboards in 5 cities of UK, protesting against the effects of advertising industry in terms of ecology and climate change as well as visual pollution on our personal well-being.

By converting billboards and working it like canvas, Brandalism claim it is like a citizen reaction. Their slogan is : « love to disobey – disobey to love ».

2. Olympic Games and Brandalism

The protest of the brand « Olympic Games » included not only the utilisation of the coloured rings, also terms of the summer games and the brands partners.

All the words on the art work of Space Hijackers were not allowed to use during Olympics.

When we talk about the Olympic brand, it's also the lexical fields of words that refer to the sport event.

This art work isn't a simple provocation, it questions every man and woman about the freedom of speech and its limits.

3. Against consumer society

Overall, Brandalism protest against consumer society, its deviances and the omnipresence of brands in society.

Bill Posters hijacked an advertising of Nike with Wayne Rooney, an english footballer. He put in place of the known « Just do it » a provocate « Just loot it ». His the hands of W. Rooney : plastic bags with brands on it.

Some other examples of artivism by the Brandalism crew : Paul Insect and his coffin in bar code and Eyesaw and his bloody « Consume this ».

Conclusion

In my presentation, I have shown you Brandalism project : its ideologic source and its content, the case of Olympics in London and some examples of hijacked billboards in protestation of consumer society.

In conclusion, we can say that the issue of this activist approach of art, or this artistic way to act , is to use the tools of the industry of advertisement against itself.

Elodie Rousselin

http://brandalism.org.uk/