Complacency Campaign- Digital Collage 4" x4"

A new kind of advertisement started appearing in the buses and subway cars throughout the city. Unlike the other ads offering to jump start dead-end careers or real help reducing spiralling debt, these posters hawked passivity and resignation. The first ones were seen as hoaxes probably dreamed up by art students. Over time even more were posted and it wasn't long before the first one adorned the outside of a city bus. The initial amusement over them gave way to bemusement and then a sort of quiet sadness. Whole carloads of commuters seemed lost in memories.

By mid-summer, the most vulnerable citizens took to following the directives on the posters. It started with a few people laying down in the middle of the sidewalk and staring up at the sky. Those still unaffected by the campaign simply walked around or stepped over the "Downers" (as they became known) hurrying to their places of employment. Still, each day the number of bodies lying on sidewalks increased. Only those with great ambition had the wherewithall to negotiate a path through this epidemic of lethagy afflicting the city.

September came and the first cool breezes of autumn stirred the multitudes from their torpor. People rose from the sidewalks and returned to work as if nothing happened. The only difference was that the signs posted all over the city were now gone, replaced by new ones invoking commuters to get back to work.