Sam3. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

We’ve been posting images here and there from the Bien Urbain mural festival that took place in Besançon, France, but now photos of all the works are on flickr. These are a few of my favorite images (from Sam3, Hyuro, Moneyless, TBLR-ONE, Escif, Quillograma, Nelio, ), but definitely take the time to check out this Bien Urbain flickr set to see everything from the festival.

Hyuro. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Hyuro (detail). Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Moneyless. Photo by D. Demougeot

OX. Photo by OX

TBLR-ONE. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Escif. Photo by E. Murcia Artengo

Quillograma and Nelio. Photo by Nelio

Photos by Nelio, E. Murcia Artengo, OX and D. Demougeot via Bien Urbain

This is one of the most perfect ad disruptions I’ve ever seen. OX did this takeover at the Bien Urbain festival in Besançon, France. Here’s why I think it’s nearly perfect:

Pros -

• It’s site-specific.
• It’s possible to not notice it. The piece can fade into the background of the environment (not just because the billboard matches the sky in this photo, but because it doesn’t try to grab your attention).
• For the people who are familiar with the billboards and do notice the change, the takeover is something for them to think about.
• It’s photographed well for online distribution.

Con -

• The billboards themselves aren’t at ground level.

Now, that last pro and the con might not make immediate sense. In the case of billboard takeovers, I think that many of the best ones make it clear to viewers that they too can do exactly what the artist has done; that it’s not only OX who can or should cover up public advertisements. So on the pro side, this takeover is beautifully photographed and people who see this photo are probably more likely to be inspired than it it were a quick snap from OX’s camera-phone. As for the billboards not being a ground level, this sort of take over would probably have required a ladder or a long pole. Those aren’t particularly difficult things to get, but ground level billboards are even easier to disrupt, so photos of those takeovers might inspire more people to take action themselves than a more difficult billboard takeover.

Some of these thoughts about what makes a good ad takeover are based on similar ideas by Jordan Seiler, so definitely check out his site as well if this is interesting.

UPDATE: Jordan as actually posted his own thoughts about this piece over at his own blog.

Photo by OX

OX‘s billboard takeovers are site-specific and often draw on the environment around them. OX has hit this particular spot in Paris at least twice, so these are pretty good examples of his thought process when designing a billboard takeover for a particular spot.

Photos by OX

Here’s the start of three days of photos from BLK River. First off we have Ox, who has done his trademark billboard takeovers. It amazes me that a festival in a city like Vienna can depend so heavily on blatantly illegal work. I’m not complaining though.

Photos by Ox

Imminent Disaster

The other day, Gaia posted about Toronto Street Advertising Takever (TOSAT). Because this is such a cool project and I have a lot of respect for PublicAdCampaign, the event organizer, I wanted to just post a view more photos from TOSAT. For more about what exact TOSAT is, check Gaia’s post.

These pieces by Imminent Disaster, Ox and Sean Martindale were some of my favorite billboards from the event.

Ox

Sean Martindale. Photo by Martin Reis

Photos courtesy of TOSAT and by Martin Reis

Love the specificity of the new pieces by French street artist OX. Check out more of his work at http://postertime.blogspot.com/