He's been around for a while. In 2002, for instance, he made the world a better place by putting flags on high-tension electricity lines.
Or another delicious installation, called The Real Thing, where he distilled Coca-Cola to get drinkable water:
Helmut Smits is a fighter. He does not allow the idea that one cannot be heard in the contemporary world. He seems to think there is plenty of space, and plenty of ways of speaking up. If The Real Thing looks too symbolic and gallery-restricted for you, and the flags are nice, but you're afraid other might just not get it, then try Pamphlet, a simple device that allows you to share whatever thoughts or ideas you have with the world - just type it on the computer, click on 'Send', and the pamphlet will be dropped from the 10th story of a building.
Also recently, Smits decided it was time to react against the constant pollution of publicity in the city. So he dressed as a town hall worker and went out there, in front of a billboard, and planted a tree.
The idea is this:
He's had some problems before, like with this balloon-based cloud that was prohibited because of air space regulations...
I suppose this won't get him into trouble, because by the time the tree gets serious, the billboard is long gone. Which begs the question: should guerrilla art be effective? Does their effectiveness lie in the word-to-post strategy?
Okay, it's a bluff. But isn't this a great goal for activist art-making: to create a bluff that becomes reality?
(via 1 & 2)
