Robin Bell’s projections are familiar to many in Washington, DC: He’s the artist who regularly lights up the Trump Hotel with messages like PAY TRUMP BRIBES HERE and SHITHOLE. During the RNC he projected messages like TRUMP HAS NO PLAN on the hotel and dismaying quotes from administration officials on the former Newseum site.
Now Bell is helping to take messages like those national. The artist created Remember What They Did with Scott Goodstein, a so-called “punk politico” who worked with Shepard Fairey on the Obama “HOPE” posters, and a Super PAC called Artists United for Change. Working with artists like Rob Sheridan, Swoon, and DC’s Nekisha Durrett (and yes, Fairey), the group is peppering swing-state cities like Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Phoenix with dozens of billboards and thousands of posters designed to remind people of the stakes of not voting.
“Hardcore Trump supporters are not going to look at this poster and go, ‘Oh, you know, what, I’m gonna change my whole point of view,” Bell says. Instead, they’re aimed at younger voters who may be motivated by reminders of quotes like the time the President said there were “were very fine people, on both sides” during a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, or the time Senator Lindsey Graham said “I don’t care” about how long migrants might be held in detention centers. The group’s website helps people register to vote, something Bell says he’s quite proud of.
In DC, the mobility of Bell’s setup means he can “have an idea in my studio and then be out on the street that night.” Billboard companies have proven to be tougher to crack—some have balked at billboards that show Nazis, he says. Nor is that form of advertising cheap, often running around $12,000 for one billboard for a month.
The artists who take part in Remember What They Did receive an honorarium of about $1,000 and keep the rights to their designs, Bell says, “enough to justify spending some time working on it.” Plus, he notes, it’s pretty cool to see your work tower above your hometown. The weekend before last, he drove to Cleveland before the first presidential debate, where he projected “$750” and floating coffins, prompting the local GOP to say Trump won’t be hindered by “artsy distractions.” After he left, the billboards remained. “My projections, obviously, I love them,” Bell says. “But, you know, I can’t be everywhere.”
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
