Artists Muntadas and Reese will premiere the 11th edition of their four-decade long collaboration, Political Advertisement 1952-2024, followed by a conversation with Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC’s Peabody Award-winning podcast On The Media.

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For 40 years, Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese have been compiling a video history of presidential campaign spots that follows the evolution of broadcast political advertising from its beginnings in 1952 to the present. When the artists started this project in 1984, finding broadcast political ads required exhaustive research in archives and often involved personal contact with the candidate’s campaigns, a bit more complicated than today’s internet click and download.

The feature length film is a personal vision of how politics and politicians are shaped and presented through the moving image. This engaging critique without voiceover commentary highlights how campaign ads manipulate public perception and affect voter behavior. The experience is an historical stream of consciousness showcasing the political and technological histories of presidential candidates and the broadcast moving image. 

The video illustrates how advertising strategies have changed from television’s early days into sophisticated media campaigns based on fear, prejudice and emotional triggers. Political Advertisement stands as an important work in the field of media art merging cultural critique with historical documentation that prompts viewers to consider the role of media in politics and its effects on democracy.

About the Panelists

Antoni Muntadas' work addresses social, political, and communications issues, the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, as well as channels of information and the ways they may be used to censor central information or promulgate ideas. He works on projects in different media such as photography, video, publications, Internet and multi-media installations. Since 1995, Muntadas has grouped together a set of works and projects titled On Translation emphasizing issues of interpretation, transcription, and cultural translation. Their content, dimensions, and materials are variable, and focus on the author’s personal experience and artistic activity in numerous countries over forty years. His most recent project, Asian Protocols, explores similarities, differences and conflicts between Korea, Japan, and China.

Marshall Reese is a Brooklyn-based artist working in various media including video, information networks, custom hardware and software, editions, and temporary public art events. Since the mid-eighties he has collaborated with Nora Ligorano as LigoranoReese. Their work investigates the impact of technology on society and the rhetoric of politics and visual culture in the media. Articles about their work have been published in the New York Times, Art Forum, and more. They have received awards and grants including three NYFA fellowships as well as a NEA fellowship, two Jerome Foundation Fellowships, a Puffin grant and a number of artists residencies. They are represented by Catharine Clark Gallery and show edition work with Jim Kempner Fine Art.

Brooke Gladstone is host of On the Media, and the recipient of two Peabody Awards, a National Press Club Award, and an Overseas Press Club Award among many others. She also is the author of The Influencing Machine (W.W. Norton), a media manifesto in graphic form, listed among the top books of 2011 by The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal, and among the “10 Masterpieces of Graphic Nonfiction” by The Atlantic.