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Urban Guerilla Protest
July 28, 2008
Contact: Joel Samberg
Telephone: 1.973.857.8070
New York, NY, June 17, 2008 — Mark Batty Publisher, a leader in distinctive books covering the graphic and communication arts, has announced the publication of “Urban Guerrilla Protest,” an absorbing documentation of the media guerrillas who ruled the urban landscape between 1995-2005. Using an array of methods designed to seize the attention of the public, many activists worldwide have successfully conveyed their revolutionary messages. “Urban Guerrilla Protest,” illustrated cover to cover, addresses many of those methods, the individual messages, and what instigated the protests in the first place.
In “Urban Guerrilla Protest,” Berlin-based graphic designer Ake Rudolf has compiled and documented an astonishing collection of successful and emotional protest actions from around the world. The book’s design and bilingual English/German layout is an homage to the ‘Do It Yourself’ attitude that epitomizes the work of the typical protester, who questions and fights against corporate supremacy, governmental policies and other affairs of modern society.
Projects by Reverend Billy, the Yes Men, The Institute for Applied Autonomy, The Billboard Liberation Front, The Ruckus Society, Yomango, Surveillance Camera Players and more than 90 other groups and individuals provide illuminating examples from the US, UK, Australia, China, Argentina and other places of where these messages come from, how they’re implemented, how they’re received by the public and, in many cases, how they ultimately incite change.
These include such projects as a “Stop Bush” message painted on a roadway in the U.S. in the same style as a simple school crossing warning; a poster in Berlin with a likeness of Osama bin Ladin posing as Uncle Sam and saying ‘I Want You… to Invade Iraq’; and a ‘Reclaim the Street’ party in London, where some protesters took over a racetrack, jack-hammered the tarmac and planted trees. The book is divided into six categories (Simple Means, Graphic Means, Direct Action, Indoors, Media, and Protest Marketing), and nearly three dozen sub-categories within them, from stenciling and pie-throwing, to fake product distribution and internet activism.
“Subversive communication practices mediate disobedience and visual subordination,” said Rudolf, setting the stage for “Urban Guerrilla Protest” and the stories told by its images and explanations. “These practices create new meanings, providing the public with new perspectives for how they view the world, which all too often differs from how huge corporations want the public to view the world.”
