Adbusting, Czech Style

By Nerida Little / December 8th, 2011 in Art / Prague / 197 views

Public performance art varies from the sublime to the ridiculous, and this number from the Czech Republic lies somewhere in the middle. It involves pink balloons, a rainbow hoodie and rock-climbing a giant, rotating billboard.

The performance, entitled Kolotoc (which is Czech for merry-go-round) shows three of the artists scaling the billboard and suspending themselves from the corners of it. Performed on the 8th of November 2011 near Prague by Vojtěch Fröhlich, Ondřej Mladý, January Šimánek, and Vladimír Turner, this is a merry-go-round of epic proportions.

It is easy to be distracted by how much fun this video is, but it’s also a very clever way of poking fun at advertising. The artists involved, especially Vladimír Turner are well and truly involved in the world of adbusting and ‘public intervention’ art across Europe. The whimsy of the merry-go-round and the pink balloons gives the performance a wonderful sense of childish fun. However, the location of the merry-go-round on a rotating outdoor advertising feature is also a great way to highlight their message about the dizziness and lull of consumerism.

It is worth checking out more of Turner’s work if only for the sake of a very clever pun in Czech he used to adbust a Jeep ad.