• by March 30, 2005

In the face of so much miserable, screeching, smirking, self-satisfied falseness, there is nothing to do but refuse to believe," bellows the mantra on the Forkscrew.com Web site. Armed with the task of shifting the world's focus from product to people, and from consumers to concerned citizens, Forkscrew Graphics is a Los Angeles-based design group that's committed to social awareness projects.

It's not an easy endeavor, but Forkscrew's wild postings, available for download on its site, are powerful enough to shake even the least aware consumers to the core. From a distance, their series of ads on Iraq, a few of which still remain plastered around l.a., look like an iPod ad. But wait, is that a noodling dancer or the silhouette of an Abu Ghraib prisoner? A closer look at the postings reveals an "iRaq" instead of an "iPod" logo, and a grenade instead of an Apple icon. The bottom tag line reads: "10,000 Iraqis killed, 773 u.s. soldiers dead."

The two l.a. artists who started Forkscrew last year are reachable only via e-mail and the handle "Forkscrew." Both in their 30s, one has experience as an art director in advertising, the other works in music and film.

"Generally speaking, we want to show that no matter how manipulated the mediasphere becomes, and no matter how many tons of messages the marketing world dumps on the public, there are ways to take the symbols and tools of marketing and use them to disrupt the barrage of commercial communications," they say.

Forkscrew is considering an additional series of iRaq wild postings with updated copy and data that will be highly visible. In true guerrilla fashion, it comes as no surprise that Forkscrew declined to divulge specific details on the upcoming postings. But we'll be waiting. JC