Interview with Packard Jennings

Originally published in Soma Magazine

Destroy After Reading: An interview with Packard Jennings
By Jesi Khadivi

When I met Packard Jennings, a key player in the Yes Men’s recent New York Times spoof, I was stunned to see that he looked more like a sharp, young English professor than his molotov-cocktail wielding Anarchist Action Figure, the black bloc look alike the artist planted in big box stores. Surprising, because most of Jennings’ diverse oeuvre, which includes video, sculpture, print, and interactive work, is socially and politically inspired. His Business Reply Pamphlet, a hilarious step by step instructional illustration on how to overthrow the tyranny of a soul sucking office job, was recently exhibited at the Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. The piece has a second life as a piece of return direct mail; Jennings collects business reply envelopes and mails the pamphlet back to anonymous sorting centers.

Jennings sat down with SOMA for a leisurely Saturday afternoon beer and talked about the evolution of his work and the role of humor in political art before heading into the museum’s aptly timed exhibition, The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now.


SOMA: How did you start making political and socially inspired work?

Jennings: I’ve been making political and social art for most of my life, but the shift into the public realm started around 1995. I lived in a warehouse in Oakland that overlooked a giant, day-glo Newport cigarette ad. After I figured out that I could access the billboard by a ladder at the top of my carport, I went up there and blacked out a tooth on one of the models. I always knew that advertisements affected us in our daily life, but I never knew how strongly until that simple gesture totally changed the atmosphere in my house.

In a field that is usually defined by the preciousness of objects, the billboard work was a healthy, almost Zen, exercise for me as an artist. It reminded me of what’s really great about making work, just doing it and letting it go into the world and interacting with a broader, non-art audience. Preciousness can intimidate people. I’ve certainly been in museums where people have felt that they are not qualified to express an opinion about the art. When the work is public, everyone feels like they have the right to an opinion.

SOMA: Is your public work ever funded by arts organizations or community groups?

Jennings: A grant from Southern Exposure, a non-profit gallery in San Francisco, enabled me to make my project The Lottery, a scratch off lottery ticket that would reveal a local’s story about their neighborhood. The idea was to transform a moment of inward focus towards community. They were available at four stores in San Francisco and Oakland and were free with the purchase of a lottery ticket.

SOMA: Do you ever collaborate on these projects?

Jennings: I collaborated with Steve Lambert on the Bus Bench project, a series of advertisements intended to neutralize advertising tactics like targeting children or manipulating peoples’ fears. We created a series of ads to counteract these practice and illegally installed them on bus bunches in the Bay Area. The anti-advertising ad we put on the bench correlated to the prominent concern in the area, which we determined by handing out surveys.

Steve and I collaborated again on Postcards From Our Awesome Future, a series of bus kiosk posters for the San Francisco Art Commission. We met with local architects, transportation officials and urban planners to discuss utopian visions.

SOMA: What were some of the key ideas?

Jennings: Re-wilding the urban population with plant and animal life that used to live in San Francisco. Another was finding alternate uses for parked cars. For example, a commuter vehicle could double as a library car, gym car, or a farmers market. They posters were particularly effective because the ideas were crazy.

This is the way that I think humor works in art work with a social aspect. It gives the viewer an entry point into radical ideas. When you laugh, your guard slips away. The key concepts behind the posters are actually great ideas. Naturally, you’re not going to have a dog park in a subway car, but it would be wonderful to check out books from a mobile library on your commute to work.

SOMA: Do you have hope for society and the city? You work has both utopian and subversive influences.

Jennings: I have hopes and fears. My work is rooted in frustration and a desire for self- empowerment, but also a real desire for positive change. Sometime that takes the form of something imaginary and utopian and sometimes it takes the form of exposing social problems. I’m still adjusting and modifying my strategy.

SOMA: One thing that is refreshing about your work is that although it’s often shown within a fine art context, its participatory dimension doesn’t seem coercive, which is often the pitfall of participation based works. Do you feel that any of your participatory works have been especially effective?

Jennings: I made a creative dissent workstation for my exhibition at the Catherine Clark Gallery. The public had access to a computer and camera and they could make one of five projects. For the newspaper project I provided a template for people to write the news however they saw fit. One person even put up a newspaper headline that said “Subversive Artist Demanding High Prices.” They totally ripped on me and put it on the wall, but I left it there. Free speech.

Another part of the work station was the “What the Fuck” sign that could be checked out of the gallery. The idea is to go stand next to the people with the signs for things like Subway sandwiches. Steve Lambert and I were discussing that the only way you know something isn’t advertising today is if there is swearing in it. Everything else adopts a subversive strategy to sell something. It’s really hard to tell.


SOMA: A Dada artist once said , “With its victory over the mainstream complete the avante garde has ceased to exist.

Jennings: That sounds about right.

SOMA: I think about that every time I watch MTV on an airplane.

Jennings: Everything that can be absorbed, co-opted, and sold will. That’s what the Anarchist Action Figure is about. It’s about the ease of commodification of radical ideology. I knew that it would be desirable