NYC Parks Had the Perfect Response to a Rogue, Naked Trump Sculpture

The sculpture was part of anarchist collective INDECLINE's "The Emperor Has No Balls" project.

@mpamer/Twitter

On Thursday morning, sculptural renderings of the Republican presidential nominee—naked—showed up in public spaces around America. The five identical, nude Trump statues are the work of anarchist collective INDECLINE, part of a project they call "The Emperor Has No Balls." In addition to bringing naked Trump to parks and street corners in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland, and Seattle, the group glued one statue to the ground in New York City's Union Square.

New York's nude Trump only lasted about two hours before agents of the city's Department of Parks and Recreation removed the statue. In a statement about the incident, NYC Parks offered what cannot be an unintentionally worded guide to their policy on unauthorized public displays: "NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small."

Here's how The Washington Post described the likenesses: "far from flattering. They're oddly shaped, lack one key element of the male reproductive system and dramatically play down another. The eyes scowl, the mouth pouts and the veiny, almost reptilian skin looks like it was torn off a human-size frog and dipped in bronzer."

The artist who designed and created the statues, who goes by Ginger, told the Post his background is in designing monsters for horror movies and haunted houses.

Someone put a statue of naked Trump (with giant belly + tiny peen) in NYC today and apparently it's also a Pokestop pic.twitter.com/31Sh6W8OwN

— Josh: Butler. (@JoshButler) August 18, 2016

Here's How NYers React To A Life-Size Naked Donald Trump Statue In Union Square https://t.co/vAOMoZVZmD pic.twitter.com/TTD9C977bg

— Gothamist (@Gothamist) August 18, 2016

And then there was no naked Trump statue. City parks dept sweeping remains. They say it was glued to the ground. pic.twitter.com/19Sugf6GJR

— New York City Patch (@NYC_Patch) August 18, 2016

Comments

[John Titor]

HURR HURR TRUMP HAS A SMALL PENIS.

[Rhywun]

That hipster giving it a squeeze looks like he's also squeezing one out.

[Pat (PM)]

Such subversive. Much protest. Wow.

[John Titor]

HURR HURR TRUMP HAS A SMALL PENIS.

[John Titor]

Such important and riveting political commentary that the squirrels wanted it posted twice.

[Doctor Whom]

as I said before

[Pope Jimbo]

Funny, I would only have expected this much echo if we were talking about a statue of Hillary with a realistic giant gaping pussy

[Hugh Akston]

The appropriate Hillary analogue would be a statue with a coin slot that says "pay here to care", and every time you put in a quarter the voice box will state a policy position.

[Overt]

Sir, would you like a sponsor for your art project?

[Ted S.]

As I said, I think in the PM lynx thread, imagine if it were a statue of Obama.

Remember Mirth & Girth?

[John C. Randolph]

You can bet that the press wouldn't be sniggering about that.

-jcr

[Adans smith]

Here's hoping no one does a nude Hillary.

[ThomasD]

Depends.

[AlmightyJB]

I'm amused

[You Sound Like a Prog (MJG)]

As am I.

*sips brandy*

[AlmightyJB]

That sounds pretty good.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

"NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small."

Jesus, nearly every single word in that sentence has like a triple entendre.

[R C Dean]

I know, its like they don't even do abstract.

Unfortunately, they are just begging someone to ask how they get a permit for their erection in city parks.

[jesse.in.mb]

Gluing stuff like this down is a dick move, but other than that, I'm generally in favor of guerrilla art.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

My favorite disruptive guerrilla art:

'96, guy drives a truck onto the sidewalk in downtown Seattle with the word "bomb" painted on it, steps out, slashes the tires and walks away.

If you recall the context, this was about a year after the Edward R. Murrow building bombing by Tim McVeigh in '95.

Let's just say, people were a bit jumpy.

The nine-block area in the heart of Seattle's downtown retail core was evacuated Monday afternoon after a dilapidated pickup truck carrying a metal heart sculpture was left at the edge of Westlake Park.

Strange unrelated factoid about the artist:

Sprinkle died on May 16, 2005 at the age of 35, while he was visiting family and working as a youth minister in Long Beach, Mississippi. He was hit by a freight train and his body was later discovered by a passing train conductor. There were no witnesses and his death was ruled as accidental.[7]

[jesse.in.mb]

I think my favorite was the 2007 Boston lightbrite panic...

The LED lights were arranged to represent the Mooninite characters displaying the middle finger. Two variants were manufactured with the LEDs arranged in pixelated likenesses of Ignignokt and Err, Mooninite characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said the device "had a very sinister appearance. It had a battery behind it, and wires." Others compared the displays to the Lite-Brite electric toy in appearance.

That's a shame the guy died young like that.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

OH crap yeah, forgot about that. Although that was a guerrilla advertising campaign so I don't always think of it as 'art'. Although, who am I to say?

*throws up hands*

[jesse.in.mb]

Eh, I'm usually willing to peg advertising and propaganda as art. Besides the uhhh audience participation aspect brought more meaning to the mooninites than the uhhh artist had intended, which created a richer thoughtspace and shit.

[GILMORE?]

the uhhh audience participation aspect brought more meaning to the mooninites than the uhhh artist had intended

the artist?

I thought that was a marketing campaign for the Cartoon Network?

Placed throughout Boston, Massachusetts, and the surrounding cities of Cambridge and Somerville, these devices were part of a guerrilla marketing advertising campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters, a film based on the animated television series Aqua Teen Hunger Force on Cartoon Network's late-night programming block, Adult Swim.[2]

[jesse.in.mb]

It was. Oh, and I covered that "Eh, I'm usually willing to peg advertising and propaganda as art." like a whole sentence before the snippet you quoted. Also the uhhhs in there were meant to give it a navel-gazing "I'm bullshitting a paper for art history" vibe.

[Zeb]

Artists can't work for pay?

[GILMORE?]

I'm usually willing to peg advertising and propaganda as art.

sorry, somehow this sentence didn't actually make its way to my brain 'fore i was hitting reply.

[jesse.in.mb]

Delayed refreshing makes a fool of me once again.

[GILMORE?]

For the record, i liked those things as "street art" too.

During the time i lived in Williamsburg, there were like 1000 examples of 'guerilla art' littering my surroundings. Pretty much all of them were utter dogshit. Although a few were memorable - namely, this guy Paul Richard, who did a self-portrait on the bedford ave sidewalk which was actually really freaking good... I met him a few times and i remember saying the first time we met that he was the only local artist i thought was worth a damn. nice guy. then there was a dude who painted the shadows of bikes which had been chained to streetlights... which also persisted for over a decade, and often made people do a double-take when they saw them and then realized there was no bike there anymore. Can't find a photo of any of them, sadly.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

then there was a dude who painted the shadows of bikes which had been chained to streetlights... which also persisted for over a decade, and often made people do a double-take when they saw them and then realized there was no bike there anymore. Can't find a photo of any of them, sadly.

that's cool.

[jesse.in.mb]

then there was a dude who painted the shadows of bikes which had been chained to streetlights...

There's a neighborhood in Long Beach (CA) that has something similar although the shadows on parking meters and things are more whimsical than an actual shadow (and they're licensed by the city, not guerrilla).

Oh, another favorite was the guy who clarified an awful LA freeway sign in an act of guerilla art.

The sign actually stayed in place until it was replaced almost a decade later, and his additions were made permanent.

[Ted S.]

Yo Martha, brainwashing little kids to believe they were sexually assaulted has a sinister appearance, too.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Oh, forgot the best part:

Sprinkle was arrested and served 33 days in jail as a suspected terrorist. In jail he began to suffer from a mental breakdown after not being allowed to take his prescribed medication. After he got out of jail Sprinkle visited family members in Mississippi. There he became a born again Christian and renounced his artistic ambitions. When he returned to Seattle his religious beliefs alienated him from friends and members of the arts community. Sprinkle's artwork became less and less frequent after being arrested and was only shared with family and close friends. According to his mother, Sprinkle "worked on a couple pieces, with crosses and stuff, but he didn't follow through. He just didn't have the same drive and excitement."[6]

You know, tolerance.

[Hugh Akston]

Tolerance doesn't mean wanting to hang out with some Xtian wierdo.

[jesse.in.mb]

New converts to anything can be difficult to hang out with.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I wouldn't tolerate it.

[Eternal Blue Sky]

"Xtian"

If "X" stands for "Christ" like in "X-mas" then why do people always write "Xtian" instead of "Xian"?? What the hell is a Christtian??

[EscherEnigma]

The other take-away: dude finds religion when he goes off his meds.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Was Sprinkle in the rainbow club?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

anarchist collective INDECLINE

How anarchistic is this collective?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Gotta hand it to InDecline, they slickly produced, even with their own silk-screened "anarchist gloves".

And like all modern anarchists, the liberal use of Bandannas tied around every appendage is strong with them.

[GILMORE?]

Do all 'Anarchist' groups also retail fashionable apparel and accessories?

they strike me more like "a skateboard company without the skateboards". i.e. they make movies, sponsor events, sell swag.

instead of skaters as the central-draw, they have douchebags who make scenes.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The libertarian ones do. Or would. Other anarchists? I'm not sure.

[GILMORE?]

I'm not sure what to make of the "Riot Stick" baton-flashlight.

It seems to me if you use it for purpose A, it quickly becomes useless for purpose B.

(iow, whack something, and it will quickly stop being a flashlight)

According to Wikipedia these gentlemen were previously the producers of the "Bumfights" film series

The videos feature teenagers and homeless men (most notably Rufus Hannah and Donnie Brennan) in the San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas metropolitan areas fighting and attempting amateur stunts in exchange for money, alcohol, and other incentives. The first video, Bumfights: A Cause for Concern (2002), was produced by Ryan McPherson, with friends Zachary Bubeck, Daniel J. Tanner, and Michael Slyman, as Indecline Films. Shortly after sales began to escalate, Indecline Films allegedly sold the rights to two investors,[1] who went on to produce three sequels.

The videos immediately gained criticism from mainstream organizations. The US-based National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) has stated that the Bumfights videos disseminate hate against the homeless and dehumanize them.[2] In April 2006, the four original filmmakers agreed not to produce any more "Bumfights" videos or distribute videos already made, and to pay three homeless men depicted in the videos, under a settlement announced shortly before a lawsuit was due to go to trial.[3]

[GILMORE?]

Clearly these are men of principle with sophisticated political ideas

[SamHell]

And talent, they had a guy doing "Bum Hunter" segments dressed up like Steve Erwin doing a dead on impression as he rolled over slumbering specimens and took tape measurements - "Just look at the size ah this one!"

[GILMORE?]

Oh, these guys just get better and better

They most recently had warrants out for their arrest for attempting to mail dead baby parts from Thailand to the US

Thai police have issued arrest warrants for two American men who tried to post baby body parts to the United States. The two men, Ryan McPherson and Daniel Tanner, have reportedly left for neighbouring Cambodia.

The men said they bought the items, which were stolen from a Bangkok hospital, from a night market.

On Tuesday, the police said they had seized parcels containing a baby's head, a baby's foot sliced into three parts, an adult heart with a stab wound, and pieces of adult human skin with tattoos.

The packages were found by staff at a DHL depot when they X-rayed several packages labelled as toys and bound for Las Vegas.

Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok has since reported that the human remains were stolen last week from its forensic medicine museum.

'New elements'

Police now want to arrest them as "new elements" have emerged after their departure, said the head of Bangkok's investigation bureau Sombat Milintachinda.

"Our evidence indicates that they either stole the body parts, or they bought them from other people," he was quoted by the AP news agency as saying.

Mr McPherson and Mr Tanner are facing charges of theft, possession of stolen items, and falsely declaring items on shipping documents.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

This is getting stranger and stranger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjuuoax2KQY

This whole thing seems very... made up.

[GILMORE?]

"they have douchebags who make scenes."

remains a pretty good summary

[Craig Smith]

Hmmmm...

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Indecline: Vol. 1 "It's Worse Than You Think" (2005)[edit]
Four years after the release of the first volume of Bumfights, McPherson and his Indecline team released 'Indecline: Vol. 1 "It's Worse Than You Think"', a video that strayed away from showing their relationship with the homeless. Instead, the focus of the video is mainly graffiti, street crime, people with mental disabilities and skateboarding segments, with heavy anti-establishment and anti-capitalist overtones. The DVD was released in 2005 and came with an Indecline stencil.[5]

Ok. These guys are kind of like the "Ow My Balls" of the anarchist world.

[Juice]

They sprayed hundreds of gallons of paint onto a desert floor? That's pretty assholish.

[GILMORE?]

"Assholish" seems to be an understatement re: their oeuvre (see above)

Its sort of odd that no one in the media who covered the "Trump Statues" so far seems to have bothered to do 5 minutes of background info of these "INDECLINE" people.

You'd think "Creators of "Bumfights Vol1" might have rung a few bells.

And .....imagine someone posted naked-hillary statues all over major cities... ?
(and i apologize for making you even think that)

i imagine the artists connections to "The Russians" would be under investigation in about 5 seconds.

and there'd also be an associated explosion of this sort of thing across every media outlet on earth... on how women's bodies are the locus of abuse and exploitation and ageism and misogyny.... yadda yadda yadda. And there'd be calls to have these people prosecuted under every possible indecency/harassment/vandalism statute on earth.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

They're going legit. He's gone from stealing baby parts in Thailand and doing Bumfights and Dr. Phil cameos to talking about #BLM and now the Donald Trump guerilla art stuff.

[GILMORE?]

They're going legit.

I'm not sure if "naked donald trump" is evidence of that. It seems pretty much the same M.O.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I ran across a Reddit thread on Ryen (neigh Ryan) McPherson and someone came into the thread claiming to know him. He gave his bio and a description of how he knew him and while there's no way one can "verify" the veracity of a reddit commenter, hell I'll post the comment.

I personally know Ryan McPherson. I worked with him for several years when I still lived in Las Vegas. He's a piece of shit. He considers himself to be an artist and a real videographer. He constantly talks about how unfair his sentencing was in the Bum Fights case. He claims that since he helped these guys out financially, it's not that big a deal. He honestly thinks what he did to these people is ok, since he did pay them, get them hotel rooms etc. He completely takes credit for this gentleman turning his life around. He's a fucking arrogant prick who's only goal in life is being the coolest kid on the room. Edit: I've gotten a few requests to "prove it". Beyond posting my professional resume (which I'm not going to do) I grew up in Las Vegas, I lived there from '91-'08. Ryan and I worked on the same production crew. There were about 8 of us. He did video\photo work and some editing, I was the makeup artist. Las Vegas isn't the sprawling metropolis that people think it is. It's a fairly "small town" and it's not difficult to have very few degrees of separation from practically anyone.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Yes, but...something something "punching down" something something.

[GILMORE?]

I'm not sure i understand.

How is "Bumfights" not literally 'punching-down'?

[ant1sthenes]

Only if you're fighting the bums. If you're paying them to fight each other, it's lateral punching. If you're egging them on to fight each other, and then selling them weapons, it's US foreign policy.

[AlmightyJB]

Anarchist for Totalitarianism

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Difficult to say, but I suspect they're highly qualified anarchists, like Noam Chomsky.

[Chipper Morning Wood]

Funded by Pentagon?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

No. When small-government types get within rock-throwing distance, they start dithering and talking about preserving those government institutions which serve to protect the little guy. Ie, when we start talking about cutting government... let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[You Sound Like a Prog (MJG)]

HE WAS IN THE POOL!

[Slammer]

Union Square has a long history of commies and protests. I can imagine the squealing if an Obama statue went up.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

An Obama statue won't go up. Certainly not by INDECLINE.

[Juice]

What? Anarchists have favorite politicians? Never.

[Atanarjuat]

Probably, plus the difficulty of finding an artistic type willing to satirize the left, but there was that painting of Hillary with the saggy boobs. I guess the "emporer has no clothes" theme is popular.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Don't forget the Joker painting of Obama in 2008, in which the media went ape-fucking-shit and demanded to know the identity of the artist.

[Sevo]

I'll bet this group thinks it's 'edgy' to tell Bush jokes, too.

[Voros McCracken]

That's my thing with the Trump hate. I share pretty much all of it, but it's not like it's a brave stand or anything. So the whole public signaling shit is a little tiresome.

You would think an anarchist group would have more of a problem with the person who most likely will be the next president, not the one who most likely won't.

[R C Dean]

Unfortunately, in this country anarchists are mostly just progs with bad attitudes.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Prog frat boys.

[GILMORE?]

That's actually a pretty accurate summary. They're "dudebro" as can be, only they have the veneer of politics instead of football and date-rape

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Doing Extreme Stuff for Social Justice.

[Crusty Juggler]

Let's go act gay in a church. LOL @ us.

[BigT]

RC for the win!!

[Michael Price]

I thought progs were progs with bad attitudes.

[foetus]

I'm masturbating furiously to the comment directly after this one. That's my art.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Relax, don't do it!

[foetus]

Congratulations, you win a stiff sock.

[Crusty Juggler]

I wish I had a face full of that winning, golden bush.

[beverlymburdick]

My mothers neighbour is working part time and averaging $9000 a month. I'm a single mum and just got my first paycheck for $6546! I still can't believe it. I tried it out cause I got really desperate and now I couldn't be happier. Heres what I do,

?????? http://www.Max43.com

[Azathoth!!]

Oh, wow man they made fun of the guy the entire political and media power structure hate--how edgy!

They took no risk whatsoever and kicked the guy they're constantly being told to kick.

They scaped the appropriate goat.

How brave.

[Number 2]

What? No Trigger Warning?

[MikeP2]

The anarchists are just pathetic. They hit the easy targets, but utterly ignore the ones causing the most issues. Where is the rogue art for Obama? Friggin cowards.

But, more importantly. since when is it appropriate for a government office to so blatantly engage in political commentary. Fuck you NYC park service. We aren't paying for your witty response. We're paying you to do your friggin job.

[Rational Exuberance]

Wouldn't the proper response have been to put a similar statue of Hillary next to it? Or would that have been sexist and objectifying?

[EricaDFord]

I am making $89/hour working from home. I never thought that it was legitimate but my best friend is earning $10 thousand a month by working online, that was really surprising for me, she recommended me to try it. just try it out on the following website.

??? http://www.NetNote70.com