Advertising Shits In Your Head

Public Ad Campaign Jordan Seiler began subvertising at art school: after being challenged by a teacher that he probably wouldn’t take-over all of the ad spaces in a subway station for his thesis, that’s exactly what he did. His practice grew from there, as he took on more and more ambitious take-overs – including the world’s first international outdoor ad take-over. He sees himself as more of an artist than an activist and claims he lacks traditional “political ambition”; however, he also says that he considers good art “to be activist”.105 Jordan works with black and white geometric shapes, which – although aesthetically considered – deliberately avoid using a slick commercial advertising design aesthetic.106 His black and white installs are as far removed from adverts as possible, without just looking like empty spaces (which they would be if they were just black or just white). In addition to his collective projects (below), Jordan still performs independent installs in his native New York, as well as internationally.

Unlike some other subvertisers, Jordan does not carry out his work anonymously and says it’s important that he claims ownership of his output. Starting out in the street art tradition, he called the project Public Ad Campaign as a pseudonym, but has since been more open about his identity as “it’s 73