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The Bubble Project Manifesto

Our communal spaces are overrun with ads. Building walls, bus stops, phone booths and subways scream one message after another at us. Once considered "public," these spaces are increasingly being seized by corporations to propagate their messages solely in the interest of profit. Armed with heavy budgets, their marketing tactics are becoming more and more aggressive and manipulative. We, the public, are both, targets and victims of this media attack.

The Bubble Project is the counterattack.
The Bubbles are the ammunition.

Once placed on ads, these stickers transform the corporate monologue into a public dialogue, encouraging anyone to fill them in with any expression free from censorship.

More Bubbles mean more freed spaces, more sharing of personal thoughts, more reactions to current events, and most importantly, more imagination and fun.

Ji Lee
Founder of the Bubble Project

Back in 2005, when we first saw Ji Lee's white speech bubbles plastered on advertisements all over Manhattan, we thought that they were, from a graphic perspective, quite interesting. But what we didn't know then, was that Ji was not only putting the bubbles up, but that he was returning to them days and weeks later to meticulously photograph the messages and drawings that people had filled in. Ji's extensive documentation became the basis of the "Talk Back" book.

Ji's project, which he calls "bubbling" is about reclaiming our public spaces, neutralizing the negative effect advertising has on our daily lives and "instantly transforming the corporate monologue into a true public dialogue."