Finding these art installments / advertisements was a task in itself; even with the help of the map, the banners were not in quite the same place, which resulted in me wandering around frantically looking for the GFMGN banner, and I definitely got a few weird looks from people. The first ad I came across spoke about salvation stemming from human hearts, which resonated with me in a very deep level. I find the concept of human sympathy, or the lack of, to be the source of all of our major problems/solutions in the world. I like that reading the ad forces you to reflect on the ways we are individually responsible for the state of the world and the people around us.
The second ad that I observed was more of a statistic than anything else. “Germany is the leading European destination for refugees, with almost 1.2 million asylum applications filed between 2015 and 2016.” Again, I believe the motivation behind this campaign is geared towards shoving these facts at the people, and kind of forcing people to realize what’s going on in the world with refugees and immigrants, which many people overlook or believe what they would like to believe. I like the idea of making it known to people the truth of these topics, instead of them remaining ignorant.
The third ad I found also had to do with a more general statement on the world. It spoke about peace and how peace is never guaranteed for ANYONE. Privileged people, those who have never had to really struggle or fight for their basic rights, see peace and order as something guaranteed. They almost take these privileges as a fundamental truth in the world, meanwhile for many people in underdeveloped countries, peace and other basic rights are never guaranteed, which we do take for granted. For this reason, it’s easy for people to have a bad taste in their mouths when it comes to immigration, because they cannot imagine the hardships these refugees are facing in their home countries. If more people were able to sympathize or even begin to try and understand these hardships, I believe the immigration debate may be a bit different.
If I had to create my own public art project based on my curatorial project topic, which was the power of protesting, I think I could come up with some very cool pieces… If I had to incorporate the themes of protest in a public setting, I would like to do something similar to GFMGN, and utilize everyday advertisement space to force the public to have to see it. I would like to make the connection between revolutionary protest, and modern day protest by using images (paintings) of revolutionary battles from our nation’s history, such as the Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, and other significant events that show the necessity of protest in forming our modern world. This, side by side with photos of Colin Kaepernick and other more controversial protests occurring in our society, would hopefully show people that there is validity in protesting. I would put these advertisements all over the city, especially in the overhead space in subways, bus stops, in the subway stairs and platforms, as well as on billboards around NYC, that way it is visible to people all over the city and in many different places, forcing people to view it. This form would be visible on all levels of the city, and I think that would speak to many different types of people as well. Not only would commuters see the pieces on their rides to and from work or school, but people would also be able to see it from the tops of buildings and skyscrapers as well, meaning people from all types of jobs and economic class would be reminded of the necessity and validity of protesting. I hope that this would change the subject from “why are they disrespecting the country?!” to a conversation on what ways the country is failing, and how we can work to make changes to how our country functions. Like the revolutionary war, we are in a very significant time period and I personally feel like the actions we take in the years to come will have a very big impact on the direction of our country, and because of that being able to fight for our beliefs and ideas is becoming a vital part of our culture,
