Thursday, August 24, 2006

I can see clearly now, or not!

How would you like having to look at this guy every morning through your apartment window?

Some of the apartment tenants didn't and took matters, and knives, in their own hands. (Second photo.)

It's part of a growing phenomenon in Europe of taking back public spaces by cutting the pictures of models and celebrities out of giant posters and bilboards. It's call "visual kidnapping."

Some companies, of course, are not too happy having their bilboards costing up to six-figures vandalized. Others, like Coca-Cola, have turned the visual kidnappings of their posters into web-based contests.

In the most famous kidnapping, a culprit in Germany cut a 33-foot model out of a Lavazza coffee bilboard, and left a ransom note demanding about $640,000. To prove he had the cut-out of the model, he severed one of the model's fingers and mailed it to the company (think about that for a second, it's pretty funny). He also asked visitors of Berlin's New Society for the Visual Arts to vote about whether the model should be "executed." The company got the joke and when "she" was returned after a few years, it paid a token ransom.

Source: Spiegel.de
(Der Spiegel)

3 comments:

Jay Noel said...

I'm glad some people out there still have their sense of humor.

Didn't somebody kidnap the Cardinal on one of the billboards out here recently????

Anonymous said...

Phoenix- If I'm not mistaken, that whole incident turned out to be a publicity stunt by either the team or KTRS.

Jim said...

quiet, Bruce and Phoenix are bonding