Just days after Bengaluru artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy’s rendition of a ‘moonwalk’ on the city’s Tunganagar Main Road went viral, a digital advertising agency in Mexico has recreated it on a road there.
Baadal had got an actor to suit up as an astronaut, and walk on Tunganagar Main Road as he would on the moon. Why? Because the potholes on the road were big enough to be likened to craters on the moon itself. The video of this ingenious idea soon went viral, with people from across India and many other countries saying that this could be done on their damaged roads as well. The Mexican agency Boveda Celeste, decided to do just that.
Baadal confirmed to TNM that Boveda Celeste had contacted him on Facebook and taken permission to recreate the video.
Their video, shot in Pachuca, the capital of Mexico’s largest state Hidalgo, is much like Baadal’s. It shows someone dressed up in an astronaut suit, walking slowly, deliberately on an uneven surface. The person carries the Mexican flag, and there is audio in the background much like the one you would imagine between an astronaut communicating with the base back on Earth.
The mirage is broken soon though, as a car passes by behind the astronaut, and we realise that the surface the astronaut walked on is actually a heavily pothole-ridden road.
The video ends crediting Baadal, with a call to join the demonstration against the bad condition of roads in Mexico’s cities. Watch Baadal’s original video here.
Hello bbmp @BBMPCOMM @BBMP_MAYOR @bbm #thelatest #streetart #nammabengaluru #herohalli pic.twitter.com/hsizngTpRH
— baadal nanjundaswamy (@baadalvirus) September 2, 2019
Baadal has received many requests to recreate this ‘moonwalk’ in other parts of India and various cities in the US and other countries as well. “I am not sure yet if I will recreate this… they (BBMP, Bengaluru’s civic agency) have taken up the repairs now. The response to the video has been really good. It went viral globally!” he says.