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Climate activists ‘hijack’ billboards to shame car firms
Climate activists have filled billboards sites in the city with artworks highlighting how car firms fuel the climate crisis and the role of the advertising industry in covering it up.
In recent days, at sites in St Werburgh’s and Easton, activists have pasted over billboards with pieces shaming the effects of cars on the planet.
They now display spoof adverts for two of the world’s largest carmakers, Toyota and BMW, which activists claim use “misleading adverts and aggressive lobbying”. Both companies have been approached by Bristol24/7 for comment.
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The artworks were installed by the anonymous Brandalism network, which has joined forces with a group of anti-advertising and climate organisations including UKSubvertisers International and Extinction Rebellion. Brandalism is “an international collective of artists and activists that confront the power of big business and their public relations advertising”.
The move is part of an international brandalism protest against advertising for car companies, with over 400 commercial billboards and bus stops across Europe repurposed as part of the action.
Locally, activists are calling for Bristol City Council to tackle air pollution and reduce emissions through restricting advertising for cars.
Eleven artists have collaborated on the project, which includes taking aim at the objectification of women in car adverts
One billboard in St Werburgh’s shows a parody advert designed by Bristol artist Merny Wernz, showing a a BMW car with flames from wildfires reflected in the windscreen, above the words ‘Add Climate Breakdown’.
Another, by an anonymous artist, takes aim at the objectification of women in car adverts with the words ‘Sexy Ads, Smoking Fumes, Hot Profits – Hotter Planet’.
Kit Speedwell, a spokesperson from Brandalism, said: “By hacking advertising billboards we’re using companies’ own tools against them to highlight the information they’ve conveniently airbrushed out of their adverts: that car companies are profiting off air pollution and climate-wrecking carbon emissions.
“Toyota and BMW have been aggressively lobbying to water down governments’ climate policy while deceivingly advertising themselves as ‘green’. But now the truth is on billboards across Europe for all to see.”
All photos: Brandalism
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