subscribe to style file blog via RSSin plain english: the ray-ban billboard project
June 30, 2008 8:17 am
Ron English loves billboards. And Ron English hates billboards, too. Artist that he is, English has made a career out of this ambivalence: Some of his more notable culture-jamming exploits include mounting Ronald McDonald parodies on the unsuspecting ad space hovering over Manhattan and Dallas, Texas, and papering over Apple campaigns with his own “Think Different” riffs starring the likes of Charles Manson. So it’s rather surprising to find that English’s current project is a corporate commission: He’s one of five artists participating in Ray-Ban’s “Project Colorize,” which launches tomorrow with the 6:30 a.m. unveiling of English’s latest billboard, a Day-Glo celebration of the new rainbow-hued Wayfarer frames. Co-conceived by Ray-Ban and Marie Claire, Project Colorize also features work by the artists Tara McPherson, Scott Alger, Queen Andrea, and Toofly and will kick off with some as-yet-unspecified antics inspired by Charlie Todd’s Improv Everywhere stunts (you can watch the artists in action here). And for the next two weeks, anyone looking to soak up the complete campaign can head over to Henri Bendel, where Project Colorize has established a general occupation. And in the meantime, as he prepares for a rare bought-and-paid-for unveiling, English talked to Style.com about billboard thievery, brand hacking, and why he’s OK with doing business’s bidding.
Your notoriety as an artist comes from staging guerrilla raids on corporate branding. Didn’t you have any reservations about taking part in what is, essentially, a marketing campaign?
No, and I mean that. I wouldn’t work on a campaign for the Hummer, but I like Ray-Ban and I liked what they were proposing. You know, for me, the problem with billboards isn’t that they advertise, per se—it’s what they advertise, sometimes, and more than that, it’s the fact that billboards offer no opportunity for escape, for saying, no, I don’t want to look at that. Like, when a commercial comes on, you can change the channel, or you can turn off the TV. But if you’re driving along some highway and there’s a giant billboard up ahead, well, you’re going to see it, and on some subconscious level at least, you’re forced to take it in. And there’s nothing you get in exchange, which is the other comparison I’d make to TV, or to radio—at least with a commercial, that sponsor is underwriting a program you want to watch. What Ray-Ban is doing seems to me to be equitable in that way.
How so?
Because these billboards, they’re artworks. It’s branding, yes, but more in that sense of a corporation attaching itself to something beautiful or new or interesting by choosing to support and promote it. This isn’t something any of us are getting paid to do—all Ray-Ban’s done is set us up with an art school-type project, like, they gave us a brief, and now they’re bringing our work to the public. A campaign like Project Colorize, it strikes me as finding a nicer dynamic between the folks pitching a product and the ones getting pitched. It’s like asking for consumers’ consideration, which, from a marketing perspective, seems like a better way of engaging people’s attention.
That’s an interesting phrase, coming from you—”from a marketing perspective…”
Like I said, the thing that really bugged me about billboards was how inescapable they were, and how impossible it was to argue against whatever message they were selling. I mean argue in the sense of—bring an alternative viewpoint to the public square. But that’s also what makes billboards really effective. When I first started stealing billboards, it was with the clear idea that the best way to argue against Joe Camel, for example, would be by appropriating not only his image, but also his medium. Billboards are just as effective as a means of subversion as they are a means of promotion, if not more so. Camel actually offered to pay me to stop hacking their brand—more money than I’ve made from all my work as an artist since.
Does it feel good to know that, for once, no one’s going to paint over your billboard as soon as possible after it goes up?
Sure, but, you know, it’s funny. Over the years, I’ve developed a pretty interesting relationship with the billboard companies. There’s a guy, one of the big billboard magnates, and in a weird way we’ve come to terms with each other. I need him, and he doesn’t need me—in fact, he’d love to stop me doing what I do. But for whatever reason, and I won’t speculate, he doesn’t. Advertising is always a battle, and I guess no one knows that better than the people in advertising.
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