This Is Not an Advertisement

Directed by Antoni Muntadas

In a project sponsored by the Public Art Fund, Muntadas installed the fifty-second message This is not an Advertisement on the electronic Spectacolor lightboard that then dominated New York's Times Square. Every twenty minutes, between commercial advertisements, the sign broadcast the text: "This is not an advertisement... subliminal... speed... fragmentation," alluding to the surrounding media environment of marketing and billboards. With each successive signal, the message became more distorted and abstract, until it was rendered virtually illegible.