Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Kony 2012 adopts street art for campaign


Who is Joseph Kony? Did he make that viral video about saving Ugandan children from becoming soldiers and prostitutes, or the guy who flipped the beef patty that went into my Big Mac last night?

With 77 million views, who gives a shit.

Kony 2012 is an American war campaign that began on the internet on March 5. It comprises students and Facebook vagrants who aim to arrest Ugandan warlord and LRA leader Joseph Kony sometime this year.

In the video, Invisible Children founder and narrator Jason Russell says that humans are "Facebook stalkers" and look at each others profiles "without actually commenting" so they can be "aggressively jealous" of each other without appearing "pathetic" in front of a "live televised audience".



Interestingly, the campaign will come to a head during "cover the night" on April 20. On that night, Kony campaign members will hit the streets and paste posters and stick stickers all over the world world to publicise the movement. They will do this until dawn.


It's sort of disappointing that graffiti and street art are used for mass-marketing campaigns like this.

Remember when a street artist helped US President Barack Obama get elected in 2008? And when it got Banksy shortlisted for an Oscar?

I thought street art would always be our thing, a place where we could be different from hipsters/DJs/the creative elite. Street art is that 'edgy thing' I describe to my white collar friends myself in the mirror to sound intellectual. Now my mom/mum/birth vehicle has a copy of Wall and Piece on her coffee table.

Can't believe how mainstream street art is now. F-ck you Kony.

Images: 1, 2

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

amen