CutUp, a group of artists and activists from South London, reconfigure existing commercial billboards to “raise awareness of the colonisation of public space.” The original billboard image is literally cut into tiny squares which are reordered to form haunting images of distresss, “portraits of people who are suffering or have suffered the strain of this spectacular society.” As CutUp says:
Street adverts are a privileged form of address and the space they commandeer is disproportionate. Advertisements and the mass media depict life and how we should live it in a spectacular way. We find it increasingly difficult to know how to express our inner thoughts and feelings, which seem mundane in contrast to the emotional saturation in the plethora of advertising surrounding us.
