Read My Lips: Political Advertisement 1952–2024
POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT is a 40-year-long video project by Antoni Muntadas and Marshall Reese. Every four years, coinciding with the U.S. presidential elections since 1984, Muntadas and Reese compile and update their anthology, tracing the history of political advertising from its origins in 1952 to the present.
The campaign spots are shown without commentary. The latest version debuts one week before election day. In 2020, during the pandemic, the artists streamed their 10th version on the East and West coasts in conversation with curators and political scientists over Zoom.
The phrase “Read My Lips,” the title of this collection, is taken from George H. W. Bush’s acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican Convention, which Bill Clinton’s campaign appropriated in a campaign ad in 1992. Read My Lips is edited from talks* with Bill Horrigan, Chief Curator, The Wexner Center, Rick Prelinger, filmmaker and founder of The Prelinger Archives, and Tanya Zimbardo, Assistant Curator of Media Art, SFMOMA.
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“As most of us are often suspended in our own indecisive state of mind, all advertising campaigns on TV and endless social media fronts are designed through the repetition of slogans or images to exploit our fear, anxiety, and stress. This selected archive of political advertisements, brilliantly compiled by Muntadas & Reese, has exposed the sociological and anthropical groundworks that loom large below the threshold of our consumption.” — Phong H. Bui, Publisher/Artistic Director of The Brooklyn Rail, The River Rail, Rail Editions, and Rail Curatorial Projects