I picked up a copy of the Dec. 24 edition of "The New York Times" yesterday afternoon.
On the front page, there was a story about shopdropping, which is defined as:
1. To covertly place merchandise on display in a store. Primarily used in tactical media projects and art installations. A form of 'culture jamming.' S. reverse shoplift, droplift.
What this basically means is 1) someone either taking something from another part of a store and deliberately placing it somewhere else in the store, 2) placing a pseudo-product along with other products or 3) putting their creative work (poem, CD, dvd of their documentary film) in a department store shelf with other works for sale there to promote their creative venture.
The article by Ian Urbina featured a photograph by Kike Arnal of a Christmas t-shirt featuring Karl Marx, the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and Che Guevara with the message: "Season's Greetings from the Three Wise Men."
Another t-shirt with the images of those figures, which were placed in Wal-Mart and Target stores in the San Francisco area, says: "Peace on Earth. After we overthrow capitalism."
The t-shirts were put out by the arts group, the Center for Tactical Magic, based in Oakland, Calif.
Another artist in the area- Packard Jennings placed an anarchist action figure on the shelf of a Target store in El Cerrito, Calif. It was apparently eventually noticed by a store manager.
There are also artists who place painted cans of products like pork and beans (labels are removed). The chief one of these is artist Ryan Watkins-Hughes, who showed his 'art-work' on the web site shopdropping.com
The artist placed the cans on grocery store shelves in Providence, R.I., and Brooklyn, NY.
The article in the "Times" also said that Christian evangelists take part in the practice to spread fundamentalist messages.
I have yet to witness any shopdropping though my mother and I noticed a copy of the novel "Kite Runner" in the photography section of a bookstore in Roanoke, Va., the other day.........but, I somehow don't think that qualifies as shopdropping.
Kudos to Urbina for an excellent article.
Useful Links (you'll want to see this!):
http://www.shopdropping.com
http://www.knighthughes.com
http://nytimes.com/national (I am presuming that registration is required)
Note: The practice was reportedly startedby the feminist group The Barbie Liberation Army which took Barbies off the shelves and replaced them with GI Joe dolls.
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