parody
22 October 2009 | "Three Word Chant!"
“In 1986, the anarchist band Chumbawamba released the album Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, as well as an EP entitled "We Are the World", jointly recorded with US band A State of Mind, both of which were intended as anti-capitalist critiques of the Band Aid/Live Aid phenomenon. They argued that the record was primarily a cosmetic spectacle, designed to draw attention away from the real political causes of world hunger.”
Goodnight Bush
Rendered in the style of the children’s classic Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Bush is a wonderfully detailed satire of the Bush administration published in time to put our long national nightmare to bed.
The pages are full of illustrated references and visual gags:
It’s not hard to imagine Chrisopher Walken reading this version aloud. The hardcover book is available for purchase online at Amazon, Powell's and Barnes & Noble.
Who needs a library for books? The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco proposes to rename a sewage plant after President Bush as a monument to his work. See this brief interview on SFist or coverage in the SF Gate. The group is collecting signatures to put the initiative on the city ballot in November.
Shopdropping
The opposite of shoplifting, shopdropping is covertly placing merchandise on display in retail environments.
For instance, Banksy altering the Paris Hilton debut album and leaving it at the record store to critique and politicize its message, or the Barbie Liberation Organization swapping the voice hardware of Teen Talk Barbie and the Talking Duke G.I. Joe doll and returning the dolls to the shelves. (Instructions here.)
A new project from the Anti-Advertising Agency is PeopleProducts123. From the Web site you can download PDFs of new packaging for products, print them out, color them in, and place them in your local store. The improved packaging featuring images and stories about the workers who make them.
Participants are encouraged to upload their images to Flickr, tagged peopleproducts123. See a video about the project here.
Redacted
Around 3,500 antiwar protesters rallied outside the United Nations in New York City today while President Bush delivered his speech inside. A decent turnout for a business hours on a weekday, and a very last minute call to action.
The organizers asked me to design a flyer to hand out at the march. I took it as an opportunity to do something a little different from a typical flyer. The goal here was not to grab the viewer and turn them out to the event, but to make something interesting for them to read while attending the event itself. The front is a statement by the organizers, the back lists upcoming events.
In the end UfPJ wanted something simpler — and something more like a typical flyer — which I delivered. But I like the way this version came out. The text is styled in the form of a redacted government document. It creates a parallel text that plays on themes of secrecy, coverup, and suppression of dissent, as well as seeing through the lies and reading what is erased.
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