I was up visiting a friend in Manchester last week, and killing some time in the PopCafe (eating a delicious veggie burger), and picked up a couple of the myriad of flyers for gigs and arts events around the city. I liked the design (with quotes in different colours interlaced with one another), and one of them seemed to have a vaguely Christian spin, which I thought was interesting, so I clung onto them.
When I got home, I thought I'd check out what the significance of the flyers was, so I grabbed one of them, and typed the title "Best for Manchester Notions 09" into Google. It was only at this point that I realised that the flyer had none of the information that you'd expect - no website, no venue, nothing. In fact, it seemed to have little to do with the other flyer at all.I found myself looking at this blog entry, which kindly informed me that yes, indeed it was a spoof. Curse my eyes for not seeing this sooner! No one seemed to kno0w anything about it. Sanctus1 didn't claim responsibility, but wished they could. Eventually I found that the artist had fessed up, and provided a little information to the spoofee (?) "The Best of Manchester Awards", here.
Turns out the artist is interested in "anti-advertising", buying billboard space only to fill with not-advertising, thus giving people a break from the constant bombardment of 'Buy This!' or whatever. And, seemingly with a Christian(ish) message. It seems to chime beautifully with the subversive, counter cultural spirit of the gospel, which we often lose track of.
So, in the comments section, if you please, does anyone have any thoughts on challenging ways of presenting this faith of ours? The other day, I was moved by the sheer ambition of Phillipe Petit in "Man on Wire" - he smuggled a wire up to the top of the World Trade Centre, strung it between the two, and tightrope walked between them just because he though it would be an act of beauty. What acts of beauty can we commit?
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