How to Access Bus Stop Advertisement Spaces
From All-Creatures.org Animal Rights/Vegan Activist Strategies Articles Archive

FROM Unoffensive Animal
August 2020

This bit of information allows you to do many things. It allows for the marriage of art and subversion.

Disclaimer for the feds: Incite, Conspire, Inspire is a solely-for-fun section never designed to give real advice. The tools, tactics and ideas given on the series are only thought to entertain. We would never dream of anyone using any of this tools as a form of dissent and we do not promote, partake in or condone any illegal activities that might derive from said tools.

Advertisement on the Streets

Advertisement shits in your head. It is fucking everywhere, in every corner, in every bus stop, in billboards, in newspapers, in TV, Youtube and the cinema… if they could, they would even print it in toilet paper! “Why does it shit in my head?”, you might ask, and the answer is clear. In this capitalist society, everything is designed to make you consume, to bend your perception towards specific “needs” you should purchase and “dreams” you should chase. Advertisement shits in your head.

Yet here we are, ready to fill your brain bucket with tools to unshit someone else’s brain. This bit of information allows you to do many things. It allows for the marriage of art and subversion, it reclaims spaces that never got consent from society to serve a different purpose, it gives you a chance to say what you want to say instead of having to listen to yet another fucking mind bending advertisement company.

So let’s get to it. What do we need to fuck with advertisements in the city? In many cases a paint bucket, a roller and a very long stick. Billboards tend to be accessible, and big. In other cases, you just need a printer and maybe a template, spending some hours designing new and informative things and printing them to then visit the underground and changing all the adds in the tube. In other cases, like bus stops and city lollipops, you might need a few keys to open those mindless pieces of metal and redesign them into pieces of art. And that is specially the type of brandalism we want to give you tools for.

There is a wonderful website called “Public Access” that tells you the exact tool you need to open the advertisement screens in your city. For the most part, that website is correct, but in some places you might need to do some extra investigation. If you discover mistakes in the website, do email them and let them know! You can get the name off the keys from the website and go steal them from the hardware store, eBay that shit and then complain it never arrived or simply email Public Access to order a set. It is up to you to decide how to acquire them.

Once you have those keys you need to try them out. Sometimes you might need a utility key (easy to find in most hardware stores) to access the side of the screen and be able to open the add glass. We also recommend wearing a HiViz and pretending you are actually a worker for the advert company. Whatever, that should empower you to not fear doing this in daylight.

You can find more info about how to exactly open the screens at Public Ad Campaigns (PDF)

To sum it up, this is your shoplifting list:
– HiViz
– Key for the advertisement in your city
– Utility Key
– New artwork printed to size, or a big marker to tag stuff in the back
– Snaks.

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