X Billboard Project, 1998 [Enlarge in New Window]

Tony Cokes and Marc Pierson: X Billboard Project

In 1991, artists Tony Cokes and Marc Pierson began working together as part of an artmaking collaborative, X-PRZ ("express"). "We started with the idea that we wanted to do things differently," explains Cokes. Says Pierson, "It was always a loose collaboration. People would come in and come out." Over the next decade, the group would produce projects ranging from gallery installations and photographic objects to videos and music. Among their early projects was NT YT Free Styles, a multimedia installation created for the groundbreaking Black Male exhibition presented at the Whitney Museum in 1994.

More recently, the pair joined forces on X Billboard Project, a public project that grew from a series of gallery installations dealing with the legacy of activist Malcolm X. "These projects looked at him almost psychoanalytically, in terms of desire and fear, and in reference to commercial culture," says Cokes. "With X Billboard Project, we wanted to focus more on his impact in the public realm." The project was originally envisioned as a series of 30 billboards sited throughout the greater Boston area. Eventually 20 were designed, and five were placed on commercial billboards in the predominantly African American neighborhood of Roxbury. "Dealing with the city of Boston was very time-consuming," notes Cokes dryly. Each of the billboards juxtaposed an image of Malcolm X with the words "just be." The designs are available for viewing on Creative Capital's website, www.creative-capital.org.

"The project was an attempt to provoke critical questioning from the viewer," says Cokes. "What is this? Is it advertising? Is it something else? How is this meant to function?" On that level, the project was a success. "People had a number of different responses," says Cokes. "Some were mystified, some were taken aback, some found the design interesting. And some did ask, What is this? How did this come to be here?"

But X Billboard Project also marked a turning point for X-PRZ. For Cokes, "the project made me realize that the text base and conceptual base are really important to me. The text base of this project--just be--was almost too simple. It made the text component in my own work even stronger." X-PRZ disbanded in 2001, and Cokes returned to making video and installation art under his own name; his video 2@ was selected for the 2002 Whitney Biennial. He continues as an associate professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, a post he's held for the past eight years.

For Pierson, X Billboard Project was also the beginning of a new direction in his own artmaking, which he's still actively pursuing. "I wanted to keep doing PSA [public service announcement] billboards, work that explores environmental, human rights, and AIDS themes--a political agenda, but in association with other nonprofits," he says. " I felt I had gained the skills to do PSA billboards while I was working with X-PRZ. Why throw it away?" Based in the coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, Pierson has been creating public service billboards that are funded not through foundations, but corporate sponsorships. "I'm working with Greenpeace on 10 billboards about global warming that will appear from San Francisco to San Diego," he says. Other projects include billboards for the United Nations intended to promote condom use in urban African areas, and "experimental travel" billboards in the Los Angeles area, sponsored by a surfing magazine and a women's leisure-wear manufacturer.

Although Creative Capital funding covered only X Billboard Project, Pierson still credits the foundation on every PSA billboard he creates. "Their support was so crucial to getting this whole thing started," he says. "On a philosophical level, they actually wanted people to break out of traditional art practice and become part of the real world. We got a small grant, we did the project, and I kept going. I've now developed this into real-life professional relationships. I think that's what they were aiming for all along."

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THIS PROJECT'S CATEGORIES: Visual > Public Art | African American Themes | Labor | Northeast | 2000