In her project Everybody says Hi to Hans because Hans says Hi to everybody, Maruša Sagadin works with the aesthetic of Southern California – a landscape so saturated with advertising messages as to create an absurd and (from a European point of view) surreal disorder. At the center of her diverse sculptural and typographic installations is a video in which we can see young people hired for a special form of advertising: juggling advertising signs at California intersections. For her work, Sagadin handed them signs containing absurd phrases, which they then spun on their fingers in front of bewildered drivers.
Pavel Vančát
During my stay in Los Angeles I focused on the Sign Spinner, a person who is usually found standing along thoroughfares, using juggling, acrobatics and break-dancing to draw attention to advertising signs. I hired a sign spinner and ordered signs from a local company. In contrast to common ads, my signs advertise opinions about urban space (I Can’t See The Wood In Hollywood Good), economy (Please Lease, Free Me From These / Kaputt – Mammut) and lifestyle (Black Tie Can Fly High) and personal experience with the city (I Didn’t Know L.A. Is Mexico). With simple, rhyming sentences, I mimicked the slang often heard in the lyrics of pop, rap and rock music.