Shine a Light On It — What worked this year (and what didn’t) in guerrilla projections

This year we did a TON of guerrilla projections and since winter is prime season for projections (because it gets dark so early!), we plan on heading out to do many many more over the next several weeks. To get some inspiration for some really cool images, here’s a rundown of what worked (and what didn’t) in our guerrilla projections over the past year.

A note about our projection process:

For most projections we use a NEC PA-903 projector with a zoom lens powered by an Ecoflow Delta battery generator. Hooked up to a computer that works like a big PowerPoint projector that can project a 1024x768 rectangle on the side of a building. But because we are rarely projecting head on at a building and we are usually at some pretty substantial angle we use a projection mapping software called MadMapper to “map” images, or warp them and make them show up where we want them to within the frame. This also allows us to project on two or more different surfaces at the same time.

Our projector is pretty bright, 9,000 lumens. And using that mapping software we can “stack” light from a smaller projector we own (6,000 lumens) and make an even brighter image.

What worked: Mapping a projection to the facade of the building

When we were asked to project on the side of the Federalist Society the day after Politico reported that Leonard Leo was under investigation by the DC Attorney General, we were skeptical that it would come out well. The surface is uneven and the facade of the building is covered with windows (light goes straight through glass so it’s not a good surface to project on).

But we gave it a shot and it turned out great. We mapped scrolling text crawling around the building between rows of windows in front of a big image of Leo’s head. It came out great and the image of the projection was picked up by a dozen news outlets.

Rapid Response

The afternoon of November 8, our team was watching as CNN reported that the house was going to censure Rep Rashida Tlaib for her support of the Palestinian people. We’d been so inspired by her courage and leadership standing up for Gaza we wanted to do something. So we quickly mocked up some designs and headed down to the National Gallery of Art. In less than two hours we had Rep Tlaib’s powerful words, “Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes” shining up in front of the Capitol. Rep Tlaib shared the image on Instagram and it was liked more than 20k times.

Projection as part of the action

Most of our projections lately have been stand-alone activities, but this year we found a chance to add projections to actions already going on. When Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now blockaded entrances to the Democratic National Committee headquarters, we rolled out the projector to put the words Voters Say Ceasefire Now on the building. Even when police responded to the action with tear gas and pepper spray we were able to keep projecting above their heads, keeping the message on the building.

Early this year we were also invited to do projections at two memorial vigils. One vigil was at the home of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on the anniversary of the death of Poushon Brown, a warehouse worker who died of COVID after being forced to perform COVID tests on her coworkers without appropriate safety equipment. The other vigil was for Karon Blake, a 13 year-old-boy who was shot and killed by a (at that time still unnamed) employee of the DC Government.

Crashing their party

We didn’t just show up at actions and events that we were invited to this year. We also had some great success crashing other folks’ parties. On the eve of the annual anti-choice “March for Life,” we projected a message that Abortion is Normal/Safe/Freedom/Healthcare/Your Right on the side of the building. The clip of that projection was shared more than 100 times on Twitter.

And when we stopped by the Federalist Society’s Annual Gala (they call it Lawyer Prom), we projected a big image of Leonard Leo and the text “Federalist Society: Corruption Lives Here” across the street. The Washington Post picked up a great image of folks walking into the gala looking up at the projection.

What didn’t work as well

Not every projection we did this year worked quite as well as the ones we mentioned above. To protect the guilty, we’re not going to share examples of projections that didn’t work, but here are some lessons we learned.

When we project an image with a white (or light) background that goes all the way to the edge of the screen it starts to look like a powerpoint presentation on the side of a building. We have too many powerpoint presentations at work and school, we don’t need them on the streets. Light images against a back or transparent background work best.

Before heading out to project, scout your location! Earlier this year we did a projection at an iconic building in DC. The design was really cool and it would have looked great, but a construction crew was digging out a water line in the street in front of the building, had constructed a big fence obscuring the entrance and worst of all were using bring work lights that added all sorts of ambient light.

Make sure the tactic makes sense in your campaign. Projection can be a really powerful tool but you can’t expect to snap a photo of a projection, post it on Instagram and get traction. Why are you doing a projection at that location at that time? Having some sort of hook (a recent news event, a related action, an event you’re crashing, etc) can help make it relevant.

Make sure your image fits well somewhere on the surface you’re working with. We’ve been asked again and again to project big sprawling images across buildings covered with windows. It doesn’t work. We can make use of space between windows, map onto columns on a building, make use of a nearby flat wall. But just pointing a projector at a wall of windows and hoping for the best isn’t going to get great results.

What we’re excited about!

The world of light projection is huge and we’re learning so much from a really amazing community of projectionists. Looking ahead we’re hoping to do projections where we fit the design into the contours of the surfaces we’re working on, filling in columns, masking windows, projecting across surfaces, and using other creative approaches. We’re also excited about using more motion graphics and animation in our projections and documenting them with video instead of just still images.

Between now and daylight savings time, we also want to use the extra hour of dark to get out earlier and connect projections with other actions our partners are planning. And we want to get the tool in the hands of more people! Our big projector is a pretty intimidating tool and we really can’t afford to have it get broken so we’re pretty selective about loaning it out, but we bought a couple slightly smaller projectors (6,000 lumens) that we’re much more comfortable loaning out and we’re hoping to offer workshops on guerrilla projections early in the new year!

Have an idea for a projection project? Want to shine your message onto a building in the area? Reach out to the team at Re:Action to talk about how we can work together!

Re:Action is a social movement infrastructure project based in Washington, DC. We provide tools and resources to support movement organizers taking bold action. We also work with social movement organizations to think bigger, expand capacity, and create transformative change.