| February 18, 2010 | to | March 4, 2010 |
It began with a guerrilla art campaign in New York in 1994. Today it is a three part fine art exhibit at the University of Pennsylvania running from February 17 through March 5.
Charles Hall, then a creative director at Chiat Day Advertising, threw himself a 30th birthday party. The next morning he found out that someone had tried to rape one of his guests. In response he designed a stickers with the slogan “This isn’t an invitation to rape me” and plastered them all over New York City.
But it didn’t stop there. He convinced a group of photographers to donate striking black and white photographs and arranged to have them published in mass media publications, among them Der Speigel, Elle, and Playboy. The stickers and ad campaign were eventually donated to Peace Over Violence (formerly the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women). It was used in anti-rape campaigns throughout the state of California. Posters and stickers based on the original ad campaign were also sold at minimal cost to anti-rape organizations across the USA.
Each picture illustrated a different circumstance where people tend to excuse a man’s behavior and see it as “bad sex” rather than rape: marriage, sexy clothes, drunkenness, homelessness, kissing, and so on. The phrase “This is not an invitation to rape me” was included in small red print on each image. A sampling of the images are shown below. The full collection of stickers and images can be seen here.
Ellen Von Unwerth
Mario de Lopez
Tony Ward
Moshe Brahka
Scottish campaign
The campaign went international in 2007 when the government of Scotland asked Charles Hall to adapt the campaign to the UK market. For the revision, Charles worked together with Clifford Graham and Julie Cerise. Full color photographs replaced the original black and white images. On the new color images, the difficult-to-see red slogan was replaced with the same words in yellow framed by a pink tear drop.
The Scottish campaign ran in two phases, in the fall of 2008 and 2009. A website with interactive posters was created. The images were plastered on billboards and bus stops. The campaign was warmly received by the advertising industry, feminists, and anti-rape activists, and even the Scottish trade unions. However, many of the comments left on the website and non-feminist blogs do raise doubts about how effective the campaign is at changing attitudes. One of the participants in the campaign, a rape survivor who had done voice overs and interviews for a radio and television component to the campaign recently went public with her identity. She protested the offensive comments left on the campaign website and also highlighted the need for additional efforts to change public attitudes.
Fox Exhibit Hall (Daily Pennsylvanian)
The University of Pennsylvania exhibit represents the next stage in the development of this campaign, both in terms of message and art. It attempts to address some of the limitations of earlier versions of the campaign.
To expand the range of artistic voices, students and artists around the globe were invited to contribute. Up until this point the artistic content has been limited by governmental concerns and the limits of popular media. By formulating this as an art exhibit rather than a public service campaign, the relationship between consent and sensuality could be explored in further depth and with greater artistic freedom. A full list of artists on exhibit can be found here.
The new exhibit has three components: the first part in Fox Hall focuses on the connection between sensuality, relationship, and consent. The second part displayed on campus sidewalks and titled “The Joy of Consent” focuses on the positive value of consent. The third part of the exhibit, titled “I am the Me”, focuses on the variety of victims and potential victims. It includes self-portraits of victims and people who see themselves as potential victims.
Both the UK and US public service campaigns have been criticized for using only professional model-quality white women as potential rape victims. Unless ordinary people are seen as victims, people may not make the connection between their day to day interactions and the campaign message. Thus the first part includes male and non-white artistic models. The third component insures that ordinary people, and not just professional models are included as potential victims.
From "Joy of Consent" (Tony Ward)
A second criticism of the original campaign is its focus on the negative: it teaches what isn’t a yes to sex, but neglects to teach what is a yes to sex. Increasingly anti-rape advocates are feeling that “no means no” needs to be replaced with “only yes means yes”. Hence, the exhibit titled “The Joy of Consent”.
Photos of all three parts of the exhibit can be found on Facebook.
