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Under the skin. Ads in Astrahan

Experimental work for the Chilim festival in Astrakhan. This building in the center of the city was constantly attacked by advertisers – it was covered with paper ads, tags, graffiti pieces, and other advertising on all sides.

This is the look of the building before our intervention:

In some countries, to fight against illegal ads, do street surfaces rough – mix paint and sand and put them on columns and boxes. Thus, the surface becomes rough, and it’s difficult to stick anything on it. I decided to try to “save” this object in a similar way.

We made copies-bas-reliefs, made in a naive-ironic manner, with the advertising that was on the building and placed them on all four surfaces of the object. It turned out that the ads themselves grew into a wall and climbed “under the skin” of the building. It seems that the ads “petrified” and entered the history of the city. Also, with the help of these bas-reliefs, the wall became rough, and it became difficult to paste something on it and somehow spoil it.

The work was done in September 2017, and one year later, there are didn’t appear any ads or tags. So, the strategy of “rescuing” that building has been chosen correctly.

Thanks to the command of Chillim fest – Eugenya, Sofia, and to my helpers: Vika, Adele, Alexey, and Nikita.

Astrahan, 2017