In the summer of 2000, Amsterdam was invaded, by the French artist Space Invader
Who are you ?
I'm Invader (that's my alias). I always appear masked in public, so no one knows my face. Some people call me a polluter, others say I'm an artist. I prefer to think of myself as an invader !
What's the Space Invaders project about?
The idea is to "invade" cities all over the world with characters inspired by first-generation arcade games, and especially the now classic Space Invaders. I make them out of tiles, meaning I can cement them to walls and keep the ultra-pixelated appearance.
How many people are involved?
Just me. In the eight years I've been working on this project, I've traveled to 35 cities on all five continents with the sole intention of "invading" them!
Having said that, people have sent me photos of Space Invaders in towns I've never set foot in! I see it as a positive thing, a kind of tribute. I did consider setting up a group strategy but it's a hard thing to delegate. So while I don't encourage this kind of copying, I don't especially condemn it either.
What made you choose Space Invaders as the main character for the project?
Lots of reasons. I see them as a symbol of our era and the birth of modern technology, with video games, computers, the Internet, mobile phones, hackers and viruses. And "space invader" is a pretty good definition of what I'm doing... invading spaces!
