Hooligans

Ad projected onto Grand Central stirs controversy

Newsday: When a towering Starbucks ad was projected on Grand Central Terminal last Saturday night, some New Yorkers were left to wonder if the landmark's façade was now for rent.

The answer, it turns out, is no. Kind of. "The law is very gray when it comes to projections," said Nasir Rasheed, co-owner of Seattle-based marketing firm Neverstop. "It's not legal, but it's not illegal."

What's not gray is how 'guerilla marketing'--now cynically being employed by the very corporations the movement was established to undermine--is pulling apart our social fabric.

Unlike other forms of vandalism such as graffiti, there's no counter-consideration of free expression, rebellion, or even cleverness involved here. It's a net negative for society, unless you happen to be one of these executives chortoling in the boardroom about the 'edginess' of these defacements, and reveling in the free publicity.

These corporate executives are hooligans, no more, no less--they're free-riders, taking advantage of buildings erected at taxpayer expense to peddle their commercial goods.

Projecting ads onto buildings (imagine the poor tourists trying to take a photo of historic Grand Central that night!) and Microsoft's well-known campaign of placing stickers on sidewalks pollute our public spaces, and like other forms of corporate pollution and weaselly operating procedures seem to stem from from some belief that if it's not explicitly forbidden, it's allowable, even if it's wrong.

You don't have to be much past kindergarten to know that you shouldn't cover up things that don't belong to you. If you need society to tell you so in the form of a law, we can accommodate you--apparently 'red tape' is the only restraint some corporations respect.

In the meantime, these profoundly toxic acts take a toll. New York City is stressful enough without any open public space being plastered with buy! now! ads. And, as artists Christoph Steinbrener and Rainer Dempf showed in their Delete! project when they covered up the advertising on a Viennese street in yellow, we're surrounded by a sea of ads as it is.

The impact of this visual pollution is increasingly being recognized by a society that's also waking up to other mind-body links traditionally scoffed at as Eastern mysticism. There's a reason why gardens, Zen or otherwise, impart feelings of well-being.

And it's not just the stress and health impacts of blaring ads. There is a deeper psychic impact--these corporations are thumbing their noses at societal norms, and much like movie and music studios drain away the pool of goodwill the peaceful co-existence of mass society requires by their constant undermining of all that society holds decent.

Let's be clear here: I'm not talking about artists excercising their First Amendment rights, no matter how misguided or poorly done. I'm talking about corporations trying to pad their bottom line with 'products', whether a projected billboard or a violent film, that they shut out of their own neighborhoods/homes. If you only ever yell fire in crowded theaters belonging to others, it's not free speech you're exercising.

So if projecting billboards is key to your life, that's fine--just make sure it gets projected on the sides of your own home as well. Anyone know the addresses of some Starbucks executives?

Photo of Starbucks store at Grand Central Terminal by Winter (who's trying to visit every Starbucks in the world). Photo of Delete! project in Vienna from Art MoCo.