About a month ago, Portland was invaded by an advertising campaign for the Cirque du Soleil of Horses show, Cavalia. It arrived overnight and blanketed the whole city like an unexpected snowstorm with its billboards and posters that contained a pure white horse and not much else information.
The show was incredible of course which is to say that the advertising trick worked like a charm on me. After seeing all the billboards, I had gone home and googled Cavalia to see what it was all about and was willing to overlook their surprisingly shitbox website because they did have a youtube video which showed a small glimpse into the magic that their show contains. This "let-them-complete-the-puzzle" advertising style has clearly worked as the show's original end date has been pushed back at least three weeks to accomodate for the ticket-demand. The basic strategy of piquing interest and then forcing the customer to find out more themselves on their own time (and thus become more invested) reminded me of one of the coolest art-affecting-life-projects I have heard of.
It is called "Women Are Heroes" and it was spearheaded by 28 year old French artist JR who stays anonymous in a quasi-Banksy way. In 2008, JR heard about three young men from Rio de Janeiro's oldest and most drug-infested favelo/neighborhood/slum (Morro da Providencia) being murdered after they were detained by the Brazilian Army for not having their papers and then inexplicably taken, not to a police station, but to a rival neighborhood where they subsequently were chopped to pieces by drug lords. The implication of both the Brazilian Army and drug-thugs in these brutal murders set off riots in the favela. Whilst the media refused (mostly out of fear) to go up the hill to investigate the story, JR did and asked the first person he met what had happened. Before long he had talked to the mothers, grandmothers, sisters, etc. of the victims and took portrait-style photos of them and started pasting them up all over the favela on huge posters (the same size as Cavalia's billboards actually) until the whole hill was full of unexplained eyes.
Then JR left. He knew the media would have to go up and find out (they initially tried flying airplanes with a "Call this number if you know what they eyes are all about" message on it) what these pictures were and thus find out the story.
As you can see, it was a pretty amazing scale that he took it to thus ensuring that it would not be ignored and the story would be told. JR has done many other amazing projects and I will stay true to this week's theme and let you do the work to discover them yourself, but start with Face To Face. It is amazing what can be done with a camera, some paper, and some glue.
Well, the You-Tube Video of the week is one of my favorite songs of 2011 and I am not quite sure why:
