Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.
DC-area artist Linda Hesh does a lot of situational art that uses common products and familiar locales to address race, gender, sex, political polarization, and other typically prickly issues. She does this with a great deal of style, wit, and wry humor. Her "White Liberal Products" series is a line of Cafe Press mugs, t-shirts, tote bags, and baby onesies that sport the slogans: "I Like Black People," "I Like Brown People," "I Like Yellow People." Her "Desolation Doorknob" series are paper doorknob hangers with quizzical statements like "I didn't ask for this," "I don't know what to do," and "I tried to forget." She leaves the hangers on residential and commercial doors around town. You can also buy them (along with the White Liberal Products) and join in the culture jam yourself.
Linda's most recent project was the For and Against Benches. These were two 6' steel benches, one green that said "FOR," one red that said "AGAINST." She set them up in locations around DC last fall, leading up to the election. Passers-by could sit on the bench of their choosing, then write down the thing they were for or against. As you can imagine, a lot of dominant cultural and political issues were on people's minds, like poverty, hunger, the Iraq war, freedom of speech, and world peace. But there were smaller, and some sillier concerns too, like chocolate, big screen TVs, and camelback crickets (that last one was a "For," BTW). Linda says that most people gave serious thought to what they wrote down and took the gesture seriously. In the end, she got 1000 written opinions and 309 photos of people posing on the benches.
You can see an online gallery of the photos and the statements at Linda's website here.
