Paint the Town Red, Vienna, July, 2011
500 billboards (504 cm x 238 cm), Vienna

Four well-known enterprises could be convinced to demonstrate on their commercial ads the extinction of wide parts of the posters surface; alltogehter 500 billboards (504 x 238 cm) have been covered with a thick red layer showing the tracks of a big pencil. Most of the original messages have been deleted by these iconoclastic intervention.

These subversively altered billboards loose their original information and support now a new communication idea, which locates the outdoor mass media as a space of personal expression. The transformed ads might by this appeal invite the passerby to take a firm stand on this unusual and surprising change. Some may neglect this offensive invitation to destroy the commercial message, cause they think that the existing order in the field of mass communication is at its best. Others might take the pencil and continue the work done on the examples of 500 billboards.

After two weeks a mutation changes part of the red altered billboards; a human figure appears on the red surface and starts removing the coulor-layer partly so that the original poster starts getting visible..

german text - long version

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