Make a custom bumper sticker! | When Good Propaganda Goes Bad

As of this posting time, Google News says more than 150 newspapers and TV stations have reported the fallout from Austria's new public art project, EuroPART, a small component of which includes a billboard depiction of Dubya, Her Majesty the Queen, and Monsieur Jacques Chirac in flagrante diplimatico, as it were. Though as far as I can tell, none of the outlets have actually run the offending pics, sufficing for outraged quotes from stuffed suits asserting the billboards are not only "not art," but very, very bad for you. A Flickr search at posting time and peruse of the usual blog suspects also turned up nada. Which only made me wonder like hell, "What, in hell, is this panty-wad all about?"

Turns out, the panty-wad is also explicitly about panties. The following EuroPART billboard also prompted stiff condemnation from the highest levels of Austrian government:

I dunno if it's art, but it's clearly arresting political speech. And I like it.

So just who are these EuroPART cats? And how did they swing taxpayer euros -- 10 percent of the project is publicly funded -- to shout a 1,000-word vagina monologue across Vienna's gingerbread rooftops? The answer, it seems, is the story of a state-sponsored propaganda campaign gone haywire. Like the time Ogilvy was out of the office all week, and Mather found the ecstasy stash....

View All the EuroPART Rollingboards....

A PDF file (6 megabytes) of all the 75 EuroPART contributions, including artist portraits, is available on the 25PEACES website -- but be warned: it's a train that runs slow molasses, and apparently only when it feels like it.*

Most of the billboards are actually very cool, and they're worth taking a look at. Bumperactive also has posted a copy of the EuroPART PDF here.

This one, titled "Grown in Tallinn," I think, by Estonian photographer Ene-Liis Semper, may be my favorite of the lot.

* Which might not be a bad omen for the EU, if you think about it.

The question has to be: What will our life be like in 50 years from now on? And not: What was it like in the past? But there is no dream without a courageous imagination. But even then, if we want to take responsibility for our dreams, we have to be certain about who we are; this will help us to acknowledge "strangers" near and far, to understand their aims and values.

My between-the-lines reading: 25PEACES was founded to promote a touchy-feely spirit of unity between Austrians and the rest of Europe as the continent slouches toward federalism. And, at the same time, allay any dark fears born of the Ottoman Reich's, ah, rather too über federalist past.

Many of 25PEACES' prior installations have a decided "euro-utopian" tilt, from the communal vegetable garden in a city center to the tourist map with all the churches blanked out: Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try.

I'm guessing everyone figured EuroPART, which opened with fanfare on Tuesday and was ordered to be at least partially dismantled on Thursday, would follow the same vein. The project decked 400 of the "rollingboards" of Vienna -- conveyor-belt billboards which flash a new image every few seconds -- with meditations on the EU from 75 artists from member nations. Mostly, they all work the same way: The first rollingboard panel sets up the concept, the second gives the punch line, and the third is a funky snapshot of the artist. Or as 25PEACES succinctly explains it: Aufgrund der Aktualität funktionieren die Rollingboards schließlich als "conversation pieces".

For example, the second panel of the "panty" billboard that caused such a ruckus depicts a woman on a euro-street peering through the webbing of a camouflage burka. It's the ironic juxtaposition of the two extremes of the objectifying women, I guess. Or perhaps the artist merely feels when it comes to the EU, the people are fucked if they do and fucked if they don't.

Which seems to be a fatal flaw -- from a propaganda standpoint -- of much of the EuroPART campaign. For while the majority of artists submitted what can only be described as "Kafka-Korn" -- rosy danke cherubs chucking snowballs, euroslackers sleeping in bookcases -- a subversive minority turned out aggressively antagonistic toward to the whole One Europe ideal. And while it's the party-pics of a "world leader ménage" that grabbed all the headlines, that's hardly a less damning indictment of the pending World Order than the woman encased in the burka of nationalism (more burka!), the Nazi-tized EU flag, or even the guy with the hard-on for Alpenmusik:

Which kinda makes me wonder, where in the world does the objection to EuroPART on grounds of general smuttiness come from? I've never been to Vienna, and it's been two decades since I've even ventured that side of the pond. But in the Paris, Munich, Amerstam, Oslo and Berlin of my recollection, posters of ladies crotches were like Starbucks signs -- you could hardly walk three blocks without seeing one (I was ten, I remember it vividly). Four-hundred years after Plymouth, are the Puritans reverse immigrating?

Not a good sign for personal freedom, in my book, when the same folks who brought us nude beaches and peep shows, latex in a can, and the riding crop for home use, can claim to be shocked -- shocked! -- at seeing people's naughty bits. And manage to get away with it.

When Good Propaganda Goes Bad

comments

Follow links in the comments and you're on your own.

01:35:00AM: 11-27-07

says fucker:

( top )

post

You must be logged in to post....

username: password: login

Do you need to register?

( top )