Rebecca Lerman - Week 10 - Trespassory Art by Randall Bezanson

Rebecca Lerman
Evelyn Serrano
TAIC-310-03
November 20th, 2018

Trespassory Art by Randall Bezanson

After reading Trespassory Art by Randall Bezanson, the main takeaways were the types of trespassory art​, such as, Billboard alteration, including shopdropping and droplifters, Culture Jamming, Graffiti and Laser Graffiti, Improv Everywhere, and Parkour. A key takeaway within the types of trespassory art is how the artists decides to “disrupt”, or change the space around them.

Bezanson describes Billboard alteration in terms of saying that it  “is not vandalism in its true sense—the group makes the point that they don’t damage the billboard itself.” Also, Bezanson includes “the goals of the art: to ‘throw a well aimed spanner into the media’s gears, bring the image factory to a shuddering halt. We work to unmask the real corporate activity behind the glamorous image, and to assault the billboard itself, to question its given function’(Billboard Subversion Guide, Smashing the Image Factory: A Complete Manual of Billboard Subversion & Destruction).” In other words, Billboard art is not a destructive or violation of an advertising billboard itself, but instead it is changed by the artist either adding something to it, or changing it in a way that creates question for the advertisement that is on the billboard. Shopdroppers do the opposite of what shoplifters do. Shopdroppers, for example, in a grocery store, would change everything on cans of food at a grocery store but would leave the barcode and the basic descriptions of the food or whatever was in the can. Bezanson writes that Droplifters “encourage citizens to burn alternative music (which they make available on their website) onto a CD, print out a CD label, and then infiltrate a large music store and slip the CD into record store bins.”

Culture Jamming is another type of trespassory art where artists  “twist and reformulate the pro-consumption corporate-based messages with which individuals are regularly bombarded.” For example, the BLO (Barbie Liberation Organization) in the 1980s switched the computer chips of the talking Barbie doll and the talking G.I. Joe doll, so that the G.I. Joe doll would say what the Barbie doll would normally say and the Barbie doll would say what the G.I. Joe doll usually says. The reason behind it being to change, interfere, and create a new meaning of what the symbols of a Barbie or G.I. Joe doll are. In my opinion, it is also an eye opener and in a way, shocks the system because not all girls think about their dream weddings, and might want to play with an action figure and vice versa.

Laser Graffiti is a non-permanent type of graffiti. It is described to be like a projected slide show from an artist’s computer and the artist points the laser pointer at the object where they are going to draw. The example of an Etch-ASketch was given in the reading, as the artist could completely erase the message they portrayed through their art to create another.

Bezanson states that “ImprovEverywhere is an improvisational theatre group whose self-proclaimed mission is to “cause scenes.”47 Founded by improv comic Charlie Todd, ImprovEverywhere stages ‘missions” (or “stunts”) whose aim seems to be to raise eyebrows.’” So, the overall task for Improv Everywhere is to cause scenes that will catch the focus of the public around them.

Parkour is about the idea of being free and having the freedom to express the idea that no obstacle can stop their continuous movement, and that they continue moving around the area with the obstacles around them. Parkour, as defined by Bezanson, who says that “According to one North American practitioner of parkour, parkour is ‘a means of reclaiming what it means to be a human being. It teaches us to move using the natural methods that we should have learned from infancy. It teaches us to touch the world and interact with it, instead of being sheltered by it (An Tran, Two Theories on Parkour Philosophy, Parkour N. Am.).’” Parkour, in other words, is about the freedom of movement and interaction with the world around you.