A wonderful confluence of streams in my life poured into my lap last night while watching the news. For many years I wrote for and edited TeeVee, a Website devoted to television commentary and criticism. I haven't exactly stopped writing for them, but nothing much interesting to me in the world of TV has come up lately. And of course I've been concentrating on my art criticism and commentary. But last night, I saw on the news that the great city of Boston was nearly paralyzed by a marketing attempt which was mistaken for a terrorist threat -- and the marketing attempt was for a TV show, Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
You can read in more detail about it on CNN's site or in probably a thousand other places on the Web. The short story is this: To promote Aqua Teen Hunger Force, an advertising firm hired some artists to create these little electronic blinking-light objects and stash them around Boston and other cities "as part of a guerrilla marketing campaign". Someone in Boston spotted one and thought it was a bomb and all hell broke loose as the police and various armed forces became convinced Boston was about to be blown to bits by a circuit board full of LEDs. Finally, someone at Cartoon Network noticed what was going on, told the police, and everyone switched from fear to anger. The anger so far has come down almost entirely on the heads of Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, two of the artists responsible, who were arrested and charged with "placing a hoax device in a way that results in panic".
What really shocked me was that the artists were arrested. Because I did something similar -- albeit not involving any electronics -- and, coincidentally -- or not -- my sign was removed almost while the panic in Boston was going on.
I am also amazed that America has turned into a nation of jingoist paranoiacs. We wave our flags, we support our troops, we slap yellow ribbons on anything that moves, and the minute an artist -- even a commercial artist -- twitches in the direction of doing something out of the ordinary, we go totally insane.
What the hell is wrong with us? The parade of self-righteous suits berating the Cartoon Network and its hirelings for its callous behavior was longer and more bloviatious than anything I've seen on TV in a long time. If the artists had planted actual bombs they might have been better received.
I remember reading once -- I forget the author -- that the leaders of the Soviet Union had become so paranoid they were afraid of poets and painters. Now that the Soviet Union has dissolved, is America turning into it? Is northern Alaska going to become our Siberia? Or maybe we can just rent part of the real Siberia. I'm sure they've got plenty of gulags we can re-open.
Our law enforcement agencies are guilty of hearing zebras when they should be hearing horses. Chances are any odd little blinking-light device is going to be someone's art project, not a terrorist attack. Does this mean terrorists might disguise their bombs as art installations? Sure. But then the terrorists could be communicating using coded transmissions in Artforum, too. Hell, they could be embedding subliminal messages in the photos on the cover of Time magazine! And have you tried circling every twenty-third word on the front page of the New York Times? There are messages there....
This insanity isn't getting us anywhere. You might think there's an intelligent art installation here -- and there is. Someone did it already, in fact: Clinton Boisvert, back in 2003, put some black boxes with the word FEAR painted on them in the Union Square subway station. And guess what? The police got afraid. Are they poststructuralists that they should react towards the symbol (the word FEAR) the way they would towards an actual object that should be feared (a bomb)? Maybe the NYPD has read too much Foucault.
People are going to say the Cartoon Network and their contractors had it coming, that they should have thought ahead more. That what they did was reckless. Even people who are defending them are probably going to say what they did was not very smart, not careful enough. Just as people were very angry with Clinton for his art prank.
I call BULLSHIT. What these artists did was not reckless, it was playful. It was not stupid, it was a goof. And if this whole country is going to opt for fear instead of fun, for pain instead of play, for bombs instead of art -- if our default stance is going to be a fearful crouch from here on out -- I won't stand by and accept it.
No. We cannot spend our lives suspicious of everyone, peering out at the world through slitted, piggy little eyes. We can't assume everyone guilty until proven innocent. We can't start in a place of fear and hate. When you start with fear and hate, you can't get anywhere anyone wants to go. You can only get to the gulag. And no one wants to be at the gulag -- not the inmates, not the guards, not the warden. No one.
We have to stop this now. We have to stop this within ourselves. We have to STOP.
Well, CHris....these were the shores that provided escape to emigres of Europe who were persecuted.
This also became the land where women were burnt at the stake as witches and good behavior laws (blue laws) were enacted to control people from having too much fun.
This was the land of the endless and "last frontier" that made room for the wild and adventuresome eventually to turn on the less successful of these people and then treat them as vagrants and ne'er do wells.
This is the land where Madison Avenue created (and keeps creating)a way of life for most people ( Is it true Blondes have more fun?)And is also the land that has created a huge population of misfits and the couches to put them on.
This is the land that was a breeding ground for mindboggling shifts in art and creativity and the land that has provided myriads of art bodegas (called galleries by some) .....pssst...pssst...
wanna buy good art.....worth double tomorrow, man.
I imagine that there will be many more shifts in the progressive direction followed by many more Falwellian shifts to the right and intending to take control of people for there own good.
Remember WILD IN THE STREETS?
That was a left-wing fantasy where anyone over 30 was not to be trusted and was relegated to an American gulag where the water was spiked with lsd to keep the 30 year old plus people controlled.
Chris, I thought of your sign when I was listening to the news reports about this incident in Boston.
I am shocked that the two guys were arrested. I think the police and the mayor should be arrested for taking art too seriously, or maybe not seriously enough. Anyway, they were the ones that caused the panic.
LED throwies have been a part of the graffiti vernacular for the past couple of years (at least) and the initiative launched by this advertising group, I think, stems from a desire to attract individuals involved with that dialogue. I really doubt that they intended to flirt with the "terror alert" psyche at all.
For more info on LED throwies
http://www.instructables.com/id/E9D2ZJ3FG0EP286JEJ/
The reaction to these objects is alarming.
-J
BK
I had no idea LED "throwies" have been around a while. That makes this Boston thing even more egregious: Not only did several other major cities not wig out when they were hit with these, Boston itself didn't wig out when other throwies were around. I mean, surely this can't be the first time anyone in Beantown's seen one of these.
I do think the police and politicians wildly overreacted and caused the panic. They're the ones, yes, who should be held accountable.
As for what accounts for Danonymous and his amazing mangulation of language and logic, I can't say. Maybe he drank the Kool-Aid, too.
Hey Chris...I'm over 30 too. They got me. Or maybe I volunteered...I can't quite remember....excuse me while I have a sip).
The officials are overreacting post-event beacause they need to divert the blame for 3/4 of a million dollars damages incurred by their would-be easily averted folly.
mo' info...
http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=6
J
J, not to disparage your additions to this, which are great -- I really had no idea these existed, and they're really cool -- but, just one thing:
Why do people have so much trouble with this?
<a href="http://graffitiresearchlab.com/?page_id=6">mo' info...</a>
Which gives you this:
mo' info...
Amazing!
My bad...
I'll try it next time.
Nothing to apologize about. I am here to enlighten, as well as amuse.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must climb down from the Throne of Saint Peter.
very relevant to this...
sorry, the site from the prior post doesn't seem to be operational.
try this
I remember when I heard about Banksy's museum adventures. Man, that was definitely a "Why didn't I think of that?" moment.
I actually spend time musing on what I could do that's so wild, obvious, and never been tried before, using Banksy as my inspiration.
I live in Boston, and I think the Mayor is an idiot. The whole incident is nuts, and it is embarrassing to sit here and watch the news as this is the only city that reacted like this, as if this was the second coming of the Redcoats(British).
Our local Fox channel is having a field day with this. By the way they turned their court appearance into a performance event, which really got people pissed of, and they used a press conference to market another cartoon.
The thing is these guys are in real trouble and now one of them might loose his chance of getting his green card.
hi chris
linked on your blog from winkelman..
good stuff I surely plan on returning.
Chris, this is McNett. Please take this seriously."Terrorism" is a code word for "poor people who live on top of natural resources we want."The best natural resource ever - petroleum - is just now about to enter permanently increasing scarcity.American oil production peaked in the early 1970s and has declined about 2% per year ever since. It's now about 50% of peak production.ANWR contains enough oil to power the United States for about 18 months. Unless we can find a new ANWR every 18 months from now until infinity, we have a problem...?Back to "terrorism." Terrorism means that poor people who live on top of, say, oil, want self-determination, but we who need to burn the oil must deny their self-determination and call them "terrorists." funny, that.
Good Christ, McNett, what are you doing here? I dug up one of your pages a while back -- a blog, I think, chock full of wildly technical information I could hardly make out. Something like that. I was glad to see you were still out there being incredibly intelligent.So what brings you here?Regarding your comment: I understand what you're saying, and I'm not saying I disagree -- I mean, I'm not a peak oil guy, and when I wonder what we'll do without oil, I think about how scarce whale oil has become, but still -- I'm just not sure what this has to do with my post or this discussion.
truth hurts
aaaaaaaaaand done. (pushes button on stopwatch) One week of alotted american media attention finished. (go ahead and google ATHF in the news and see when the last mention of the prank was... ha!) The only reason we won't ever make it as a culture that lives in suspicion and fear is that our attention spans are equal to a 5 year olds. On to the next big thing for this week...