At one small point on the United States-Mexico border, where two towns named Tecate are separated by a fence, residents of both countries sat down to the same picnic at a gigantic table printed with ‘The Eyes of the Dreamer.’ This new event, held on October 8th, comes just weeks after the artist rolled out a massive 65-foot-tall photographic installation of a toddler peering over the fence from the Mexico side.

Thanks to all the daydreamers that joined us yesterday ? #PicNicAtTheBorder pic.twitter.com/Y2H1ZJOf4w

— JR (@JRart) October 9, 2017

“GIANT PICNIC at the border today in Tecate … people eating the same food, sharing the same water, enjoying the same music (half of the band on each side) around the eye of a dreamer … we forgot the wall for a minute …” says JR in a Facebook post.

Amazing souvenir of the picnic at the border … @chopemdownfilms pic.twitter.com/pCL0iHkh5E

— JR (@JRart) October 11, 2017

Picnic-goers sat down to the same meal at one big table for the single-day installation, which was apparently pulled off with the help of a sympathetic border guard. A band played, with some of its members sitting on the U.S. side and others on the Mexico side.

I often found an « angel » that helped us make the impossible possible … The picnic today was clearly forbidden and yet possible… pic.twitter.com/YzjJ4fatfH

— JR (@JRart) October 9, 2017

JR is well known for these black-and-white photographic installations, which are put up all over the world, often without official permission. The subjects of his portraits are usually everyday people who live in the area. The TED Prize winner says he aims to use art to “turn the world inside out.”

The beach is one big billboard for companies looking to surreptitiously market their products, from Game of Thrones to Jim Beam, which would be annoying if most of these guerrilla installations weren’t so fun. Plus, some of these site-specific seaside installations are the work of mysterious anonymous artists, or organizations raising awareness for issues like sea turtle protection and skin cancer avoidance.

Game of Thrones Dragon Washed Up on a British Beach

A 40-foot-long dragon skull seemingly washed up on Charmouth Beach in Dorset, England in the spring of 2013, likely only puzzling onlookers who aren’t familiar with the HBO series Game of Thrones. Still, it’s a pretty fun example of guerrilla marketing, especially since this area is known as the ‘Jurassic Coast,’ where lots of dinosaur fossils turn up. It took three sculptors over two months to design, sculpt and paint the skull. Who could resist climbing inside?

Jim Beam Creates the World’s Largest Cooler at Bondi Beach

Jim Beam and the ESKY cooler company teamed up to temporarily transform the Bondi Icebergs Pool into the world’s largest cooler for the filming of a commercial. The cooler was filled with about half a million gallons of water, over 500 giant ice cubes and 33 supersized Jim Beam cans.

King Kong Footsteps at the Santa Monica Pier

Giant footsteps and a smashed lifeguard truck appeared to signal total chaos at the Santa Monica Pier in June 2010, signaling the opening of the new Universal Studios Hollywood theme park attraction, King Kong 360 3-D. This ambient advertisement by the firm David&Goliath was a accompanied by a ‘news report’ on YouTube. Does this make anyone else miss the old King Kong ride? RIP, King Kong Encounter, which burned down in 2008.

Unexplained Giant Lego Man

A life-sized Lego Man washed up on a Florida beach with the somewhat nonsensical message ‘NO REAL THAN YOU ARE’ printed on its chest. Measuring about 8 feet tall and weighing 100 pounds, the ‘man’ was discovered on the Siesta Key beach. The Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office sent out a tongue-in-cheek press release reporting that they had taken the ‘man’ into custody, and found ‘Ego Leonard’ written on his back. Then, another one washed up in Japan. Turns out, Ego Leonard is the pseudonym of an anonymous Dutch artist, and his creations show up periodically on beaches around the world. Somebody should warn King Kong, so he doesn’t step on him.

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Messages In The Sand 12 Great Guerrilla Ads At The Beach River Banks

Phosphorescent paints, pigments and pebbles that charge via sunlight by day and glow after dark transform the nighttime urban landscape, illuminating murals, bike paths, skate parks, rivers and even live snails. It’s like taking the glow-in-the-dark stickers you plastered all over everything as a kid out into the real world and achieving similar effects on a satisfyingly large scale, hiding secrets all over the city that will be revealed when the sun goes down.

3 Glow-in-the-Dark Street Art Murals by Reskate

When the sun goes down, hand puppets, knives and space helmets appear within a rabbit, a planet and a loaf of bread. Spanish creative studio Reskate used glow-in-the-dark paint to hide these unexpected figures within their silhouetted murals.

Glow in the Dark Bike Path in the Netherlands

This bike path is safer after dark thanks to small particles of phosphor called ‘luminosphores’ that charge up during the day and release light at night. Urban planners in Lidzbark Warminski, Poland took inspiration from a similar project by Studio Roosegaarde in the Netherlands, but wanted to use a zero-energy light source instead of solar-powered LEDs.

Phosphorescent Mural by SpY, Paris

Blending into the pale brick on the side of a Paris building by day, this mural by SpY reveals its secrets at night, blaring ‘I AM NOT A REAL ARTIST.’

Snail Swarm Enhanced with LED Lights & UV Paint

Researching snails can be kind of dry, so a group of researchers from the Ecology department at the University of Exeter found a more fun – and visually dazzling – way to go about it. The team tagged hundreds of live snails with LED lights and UV paint, and then tracked their patterns of movement at night. The experiment is an effort to track how snails spread lungworm to dogs.

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Glow In The Dark Outdoor Art 15 Designs That Come Alive At Night

A “universally despised” postmodern public square in Los Angeles is getting a second look this week with the addition of a surreal glittering silver cloud that undulates in the air above the concrete, seemingly floating without any supports. Tethered from a 10-story purple bell tower to a lower corner of the park, the latticework installation is made of thousands of holographic mylar strips that flutter in the breeze. The work is a collaboration between patrick Shearn of Poetic Kinetics and the AA Visiting School of Los Angeles, a week-long design program for art students.

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Due for a makeover in 2019 that will replace much of the concrete with grass and create shade canopies, Pershing Square tends to be empty and quiet despite renewed vitality in other areas of downtown L.A. It’s one of the city’s oldest public spaces, but had its trees and grass ripped out in 1951 so a parking garage could be installed beneath it.

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Poetic Kinetics is known for creating many of the massive, colorful creations that appear at Burning Man each year. Sharon says he was inspired by nature and “the feeling that we are only aware on a very surface level of what is really going on around us. We feel the currents of air on our skin but do not see the larger movements.”

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The Los Angeles Times captured 360-degree views of the installation, which billows like a school of fish when it catches the wind just right. Measuring 15,000 square feet, ‘Liquid Shard’ will remain in place through August 11th, so stop by and experience it in person if you can.

Last time we caught up with miniaturist Slinkachu, the UK-based artist had placed his little people on the streets of Paris, and now he’s brought his signature blink-and-you’ll-miss-them scenes to the United Arab Emirates. Tailoring each tiny tableau to the setting, Slinkachu has captured a series of humorous moments full of ostentatious wealth, surveillance, camels, tourists doing stupid things and other elements that are quintessentially Dubai.

The new series of 10 miniature installations appeared on the streets as part of Dubai Walls, the first outdoor urban art show in the UAE. Slinkachu, “abandoning little people in the streets since 2006,” is one of sixteen artists participating in the event, which also features Etam Cru, ROA and Eine.

Slinkachu customizes miniature figurines, hand-paints them and then creates little scenes in public places, often right on the sidewalk in plain view of passersby. They end up becoming temporary art, often swept up almost immediately and thrown away, or taken by people who want to keep them for themselves. Since these were created specifically for an art fair, they likely had a longer run in the streets than usual.

“The ‘Little People Project’ started in 2006,” says the artist. “It involves the remodeling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which I then place, photograph and leave on the street. It is both a street art installation project and a photography project. The street-based side of my work plays with the notion of surprise and I am to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings.”

“The scenes I set up, more evident through the photography and the titles I give these scenes, aim to reflect the loneliness and melancholy of living in a big city, almost being lost and overwhelmed. But underneath this, there is always some humor. I want people to be able to sympathize with the tiny people in my works.”