As Donald Trump finished his record-length State of the Union address earlier this year, a group of artists drove to a cul-de-sac off Echo Park Lake in L.A. and got to work. The three men dressed in loose-fitting work pants and hoodies unloaded two laser projectors (one for backup), some lenses, a laptop and battery packs onto carts and brought them to the middle of a pedestrian bridge that crosses over the 101. In the anonymity of darkness, the members of the guerilla art collective VJayBombs set up their gear with the confidence of practice.
Within minutes, the projector was warming up and aligned with the 100-foot-tall wall of the L.A. Downtown Medical Center. Then, a final review of the video to be projected was made.
“Did you put sweat on the Statue of Liberty?” Cat, a co-founder of the group, asked. “That’s sick.”
“Looks good to me,” said Bev, another co-founder. He then caught himself: “Go back to ‘immigrant’ for a second. ‘Immigrant’ was spelled right, yeah?”
And with that, the laptop was connected to the projector, and the video was put out for the world to see (or, at least drivers passing by on the freeway below). The roughly 45-second animation — projected without authorization — looped for more than 30 minutes and satirized the State of the Union. It showed Trump at a lectern holding the Statue of Liberty hostage, vomiting gold feces and wearing a medal around his neck while slogans like “Immigrant Bad!” and “Forget the Files” flashed behind him.
