Occupy News Bin

ONB

Though I often disagree with the sentiments I hear by folks at Occupy Wall Street encampments, I strongly support their rights to say them peacefully. So when I see so much footage of police using heavy handed tactics on non-violent protestors it not only makes me more sympathetic to OWS… it makes me feel sick.

ONB

I’ve been wanting to do some sort of installations inside of the abandoned newspaper receptacles spread throughout our city, so I spent most of Thanksgiving creating a diorama of the UC Davis pepper spray incident which was installed in an empty newspaper bin on Market Street this morning (Black Friday). My hope was to install a piece to get people thinking about recent police violence while they were trying to do their holiday shopping. If I had more time I would have created many more dioramas based on scenes from New York and Oakland.

ONB

I didn’t set out to create a Lego diorama, but it turns out that their “City sets” contained almost everything you need to create a protest scene. Seriously though, are the cities in Denmark filled with cops? There’s like a 2 to 1 ratio of police to civilians in these kits. With the help of my friend Jon, we modified the helmets and police gear to be a little more “riot”. I actually took a considerable amount of time customizing Lt. John Pike, the centerpiece of the diorama. Even going as far as to paint him with a matte black finish.

ONB

Jon also assembled some blinky LED throwies, which acted as an “attract mode” to get people to notice. I installed the piece at 8am and it appears to already have been removed by noon. I even saw some bomb squad cops on Market Street so I wonder if maybe they were involved somehow. So we spent 7 hours working on this piece that was installed for less than 4 hours and it was totally worth it. While cleaning out the bin and putting in my diorama, several people approached me and asked what the piece was all about. We had great conversations and my little project put big smiles on each of their faces.

Comments

12 responses to “Occupy News Bin

  1. […] after installing my UC Davis diorama in an un-occupied Employment Guide bin, I scattering mini-OWS protestors in news bins around SF. […]

  2. […] One of the most recent iterations on the theme: Lego protest occupying news bins… […]

  3. […] Eine der jüngsten Abwandlungen des Themas sind die Lego Besetzungen von Zeitungskästen… […]

  4. […] Popular used an empty Employment Guide newspaper box (how apropos) in San Francisco to create his Occupy News Bins diorama out of LEGOs. The scene mimics the recent UC Davis pepper spray incident complete with a […]

  5. […] Black Friday, Doctor Popular, a self-described “game designer, illustrator, tailor, rapper, and super nerd,” created […]

  6. G. M. Avatar
    G. M.

    My seven year old made up an Occupy Lego Land scene…any way I can share the pics with you?

  7. […] posting pics of my Occupy News Bins project, I got this email from a reader about a similar art project done by her 7 year old son: My […]

  8. […] many abandoned newspaper bins in San Francisco. Someone removed it less than four hours later, but the photographs remain. This scene reminds me of another campus protest incident 40 years ago that was also recreated in […]

  9. […] many abandoned newspaper bins in San Francisco. Someone removed it less than four hours later, but the photographs remain. This scene reminds me of another campus protest incident 40 years ago that was also recreated in […]

  10. […] find abandoned newsstands scattered throughout downtown San Francisco. I’ve been a fan of re-using newsbins, but I hadn’t really though about doing anything larger until I saw what the folks at Colpa […]

  11. […] know I like news-bin related projects, right? Like this and […]

  12. […] few years back, I installed this silly little Lego installation in a newsbox in downtown SF. It was Black Friday shortly after the UC Davis pepper spray incident. […]

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