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We've seen them around town and we're sure you have too: plush teddy bears hanging from telephone wires.
We weren't sure whose idea it was, but Atwater Village Newbie took at stab and seems to have come up with an answer that has basically been confirmed: Hearts Challenger. We don't know a ton about the group, except that it trucks (literally) in ice cream, music, street art and collaborates with Swarovski. Atwater Village Newbie noticed the serious overlap between the group's "zine" page and the project's tumblr.
Whatever the bears' meaning, it reminds us a little bit of the late local artist Mike Kelley who featured stuffed animals in his work. He said his work started out as a response to commodity culture but it ended up being read by the public as a response to child abuse, and so he shifted gears in his work to incorporate that reading.
The bears hanging from wires do seem a little creepy—whether or not that was the intention. When you scroll through the near-infinite tumblr of hanging bears, it looks like some sort of mass teddy bear suicide ritual.
We've seen a lot of hanging art in recent years: ruby slippers, Tom Selleck, sideways B's and birds.
