Activist Art meets Commercial Art

I stumbled across the latest from activist Italian artist Graziano Cecchini today while I was catching up on posts at BoingBoing. Anyone here in the U.S. who has heard of him, has probably heard the name in association with a stunt that took place at the Trevi Fountain last October.



The water in the fountain was dyed red and a box of leaflets was found nearby which claimed "the red paint was a protest for expenses incurred in organizing the Rome Film Festival and symbolically referred to the event's red carpet." (source) Cecchini was blamed for the event which caused the water in the well-known tourist hotspot to look almost like blood when he was identified by a security camera, but was never charged since he denied involvement.

His new artistic protest also resulted in a splash of color in Roma. Half a million colored plastic balls were dumped down the Spanish Steps, with many finally filling the Barcaccia fountain at the bottom. (source)



This time, the work of artistic expression (or vandalism, depending on your perspective) took place as a statement on the worsening waste situation which has been causing health concerns in Naples over the past 6 months.(source) In my opinion, it's a beautiful alternate display of protest. Walking around New York City, you can regularly see people with picket signs or the giant inflatable rat which signifies a strike, but to see something like this is truly a different statement, one that is difficult to ignore both as protest, and art.

There are videos of the protest all over YouTube but I kind of find the photos a bit prettier.


On a similar artistic note, this protest reminded me of the Sony Bravia commercial, and then a few minutes later I saw a new one on tv!

The first commercial is set to the tune of Jose Gonzalez covering The Knife's song Heartbeats and shows the release of bouncing rubber balls in San Francisco (a preplanned, and city-OKed event, much unlike the Cecchini protest). It's a lot of fun to watch, not to mention I love the song.



Then today I saw the new Sony commercial, this time using stop-motion graphics (which apparently took 3 weeks to create/film) of multi-colored rabbits jumping around New York City, culminating in a purple wave and finally breaking into flipping cubes. Also pretty fun to watch.