Hmmm… …seems inspired by something familiar…

So! After some ridiculous nonsense, it would appear that the city has taken the problem to heart! (…at least for a little while, I doubt that this installation will last forever- or even all that long!)

It would be great if this installation was permanent (and had the info design cleaned up a little bit.. it reads like: “You are here?” Man, you should know, Mr. tourist info booth!)- or even better: permanently rotated with different tourist info! It would also be fantastic to see similar installations on ALL of the Info-To-Go booths- not just on the only one that has been publicly attacked and criticized!

But still, it seems that the city is acknowledging the problem here, and responding with positive change to my criticism.

I think I can score this one as a win!

After we finished up with the daytime install of the Pattison Pillars, some of the volunteers remained behind to begin the prep for the nighttime mission- Illegal Billboards! (We had cool names; the daytime mission was called Ground Team, and the nighttime mission was called Sky Team.)

Above are most of the billboards that the team I was with hit (We did an additional three other billboards). I was rolling with Jordan, Sean, a film crew, (now into their third year of preparing a full-length documentary on public art and advertising- I’m sure I’ll keep you up to date with that…) and Liliana Velásquez, who did an amazing performance as the “Goddess of Transformation” on a large billboard that we whitewashed for her. Her performance was, hands down, the best performance art that I have ever been witness to. It was the moment, the night, the unique, unreproducible specialness of it all, but it was also such a great use of the billboard as a structure. Most ad takeovers only treat the advertising structure as the advertisers do- a place to mount 2D work. Here the whole thing was used and transformed as a stage- the wasteful billboard spotlight became a theater footlight, the platform for installing work became a thin stage, and the billboard, once whitewashed, became the backdrop where anything could happen. Once the billboard was transformed into a stage, you could really see, as if seeing a billboard for the first time, how goddamn huge they are. I mean, it’s an Ad. And it’s big enough to easily stage a performance on. And they are everywhere. That’s kinda crazy, right? It reminded me of the person who sewed a wearable car suit and walked around in it through crowded public places to remind people of just how big and selfish a cars space needs are- especially in a city- whether parked or driving… anyone recall the name of that artist?

Anyway, here’s a video that captures a little of the magic:

…and you can see some of the Billboards done by the other team here!

Hello Friends!

It’s been some time. I can now finally tell you why I’ve been elusive of late. I’ve been away because I’ve been very busy helping to plan and execute TOSAT!

If you’re in Toronto, you may have already heard about it, but if you have not, let me give you the low-down:

After coming up to New York by myself to participate in the first NYSAT, and then with a solid crew of Torontonians for the second NYSAT, Jordan, the creator and driving force behind the SAT project became convinced that Toronto would be an ideal city to bring it to next. I believe it was Sean Martindale who first made the suggestion that TOSAT should happen, shortly after the completion of NYSAT 2!
Since that time, we have been talking, planning and recruiting other help (Martin Reis & Vanessa of DUSPA have both been invaluable!) which culminated last weekend when it all went down! Successfully!

I’d like to thank all the volunteers that installed artwork during the day on the Pattison Pillars (including my own work above, which I did NOT install myself!) and everyone that helped with the Billboards at night, which I will talk more about tomorrow!

Thank you so much everyone!

More Soon!

Today I have something great to share with you that I’ve been excited to share for some time! Do you recall that one project that Jason Eppink and I came up with? No, not that one; this one!

Well, Jordan loved it, and with his help, we were able to take it to another level. This time we got the new signage printed “professionally”, and we did a lot more of them. It took Jordan and I about a day to assemble the vinyl, and we took another day (…and a good bit of the night) walking all around New York installing them! We had a close call with a couple police officers, close encounters with a couple bars along the way, and very tired feet by the end of it all!

Jordan Writes:

“Back In February PosterChild created an altered placard for the NPA city outdoor illegal street level billboards. He was aware of the fact that these placards were a lie being perpetrated on NY City by NPA as it made its transition to a new company called Contest Promotions. Under this new company, NPA’s illegal operations would be shut down and only those that could pretend to be running a raffle box would remain through a twisting of legal language. PosterChild’s single placard flew under the radar while still informing the public of NPA’s little secret, in a stark contrast to more overt actions we tend to carry out here at PublicAdCampaign. Needless to say, I wanted to see more.
At this same time I had been toying with the idea of running a micro-grant program. The grant would be on a rolling submission/review basis and the only stipulations would be that projects facilitate critical public interaction with outdoor advertising, and cost under one hundred dollars. Along with this small amount of production money PublicAdCampaign would help by tapping any resources we might have which could facilitate potential projects. PosterChild’s Truth In Advertising was a natural choice. In total the entire project ended up costing $91.48 and produced about 40 fake placards. You can see all of the images [Here]
I would like to thank PosterChild for inaugurating this micro-grant program with such a fantastically simple and effective project. In doing so I would also like to open up the next cycle of grant submissions. A clever idea can go a long way, alter how people think about the spaces they live in, and change what they come to expect from the streets that surround them. We hope that even in a small way we can facilitate this process and enrich the cities of this world with innovative and fun public works. Please take a look at the simple guidelines for submitting a proposal.”

I highly encourage you to submit to this new, fantastic and generous micro-grant program offered by PublicAdCampaign!

You can see my “Under One Hundred” project page here!

Here is my V-TARP entry, courtesy of Mr. Jerm.

I get on the bus and it’s all ads for debt management, fast food, television- ads from busybody organizations convincing me to keep my accidental pregnancy. Ads from government organizations offering me help to get a job. Ads from doctors offering to restore my hair AND my ability to get erections all from the same clinic. Ads from religions offering me an escape.

When your inundated with this crap, daily, with no choice, you can feel trapped. Optionless. Poor. No wonder the silence, peace and control of a private automobile is so luxurious by comparison.

Public Transit Operators Everywhere:
Want more humans to ride public transit? Make it more humane. Take out all the ads.

So the wankers put the umbrella back up.

The way the beach umbrella was mounted before wasn’t adequate: It was strapped in a half-assed way to the pillar, requiring that the roof be removed, and presenting real safety problems in the high winds that we’ve been having. It was a PROBLEM. Acting quickly, the umbrella was removed, and as you can see, in short order it was re-installed in a much more sturdy and professional manner. PROBLEM SOLVED. After all, H&M was promised a branded beach umbrella- and there were contracts to uphold- money to be lost.

And those other PROBLEMS that the advertising pillar has with its secret life as a tourist information booth? Like the has-never-once-been-functional touch screen? Don’t worry. As you can see, they sent someone around right away to take care of that too. PROBLEM SOLVED. After all, Astral Media has a contract with the city- no, with the people of Toronto themselves- a sacred bond- to provide quality tourist information in exchange for being trusted with the privilege of exploiting our shared streetscape for personal profit.

Original work here.

I didn’t catch a photo in time, but when they undid my repairs to the tourist information stand, they not only replaced the interesting information with uninformative & underfed bikini-clad vixens, but also strapped a full-sized, H & M branded Beach Umbrella to the damn thing. They even took off the roof to accommodate it. I couldn’t take a photo of this “Tourist Station Domination” because I could locate my friggin camera that day. You ever have one of those days? frig. Anyways, by the time I located my camera and returned to the spot, the offending umbrella had been removed- presumably because the high winds we’ve been having made the umbrella a safety risk. Hopefully it was removed preemptively, and nobody had to be hurt for this lesson to be learned.

If anyone caught a photo, I’d love to get ahold of it.

Hey! A real update!

I installed this piece yesterday!

It’s in a so-called “Info-To-Go” Pillar at University and Dundas! Only a few steps from the police station! :0

I wrote in 2008 about these pillars, and the rest of the Coordinated Street Furniture program in general, and that is a good place to go for background on this project, but I’ll get into more detail here about these “Information” Pillars specifically: 120 are due to be rolled out across Toronto- according to the cities website, 28 have been installed thus far.

They are an embarrassment and a shame for Toronto. Toronto is a great city, but we have a bad reputation amongst the rest of our nation. That isn’t anything new. We are thought of as a cold, ugly city obsessed with profit and completely bereft of culture. I live here, I love it here, and I know that image of us just isn’t true- but what other impression will we give to tourists and visitors to our city when we can’t even manage, as a city- the biggest in Canada I’ll remind you, to erect a simple post with tourist information and a map on it without succumbing to the temptation to privatize it and turn it into a profit-making venture? These “Information booths” are strictly billboards first, and tourist information second- and a distant second at that. The pillars are structured and oriented so that the ads get the best visibility and well over double the surface area. In fact, in most cases you would walk right past these ugly streetlevel billboards without ever realizing that it was SUPPOSED to be a tourist information pillar, never suspecting that there was a map tucked into the back, along with map dispensers- and in some cases- interactive touch screens. About those screens- I imagine that no one really ever expected the fancy hi-tech touch screens (How Toronto!) to operate indefinitely, but even I was taken aback when they were installed not working. They didn’t work from DAY ONE. They have NEVER worked. You can go check. Have a look at this booth I improved. The screen is dead. The map dispenser? It’s LED screen scrolls “SOLD OUT” and someone has posted the helpful label “Coming Soon” (Presumably, So you don’t waste your toonie on tourist information that actually won’t ever be coming.) The advertisements, of course, have been operational since the day the pillar has been installed. Like the streetlevel billboards masquerading as phonebooths in New York: As billboards, these pillars always work.

At least the scrolling LEDs at the top of the pillar give the time, right? It’s just too bad that the time displayed is incorrect by an hour.

But what more can we expect when we give the job of providing tourist information to a media giant? These companies are in the business of exploiting public space for profit, not in the business of enhancing
your experience of it for pleasure. They tell tourists what to buy, not where to go for free walking tours.

Toronto is spending tons of money selling itself as a cultural place. Events, promotions, slogans: we are told that we “Live With Culture”- and yet at the same time the city is defeating it all with short-sighted stupid moves like this. Yes, it’s just street furniture. But street furniture has such a huge impact on how our city looks and feels. It shapes it on the ground, it makes the first impression, and it continuously shapes further impressions as we explore the streets and all the sights and sounds that they have to offer.

And if we ever get lost in our explorations, we can always go to the nearest “info to go” pillar and find out what perfume we ought to be wearing.
(As you can see from the nightime shots that.. ah.. reveal which ads I.. harvested in order to make this work [I can't afford all that printing! Plus Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Right?] in this case, that perfume would be Marc Ecko.)

Of course, tourist information pillars should be providing a map and helping the lost AT MINIMUM. They should also provide some information on local lore, landmarks, and legends. So what I’ve done is fix this pillar (something I just couldn’t do with the broken payphones of New York) it is now, at least for the time being, a true tourist information pillar. It currently informs passersby that care to look, in the two official languages, about the nearby Canada Life Building and it’s weather beacon in brief. I hope it shows just a little of the great proud history and culture that we have to offer here in Toronto, and also how a different way is not only possible, but easily achieved. Imagine the rich possibilities if every future “info to go” pillar actually showcased some site-specific local history and knowledge?

If you have trouble visualizing such a thing, visit Dundas and University. But go soon.

Photo by Duchamp. Used under a Creative Commons License.

No normal update today- something rather historic happened today that I think deserves a pause: The city of Toronto has officially decided to finally get a handle on its billboard problem!!! More information here and here, but, basically, a new harmonized bylaw will provide clarity to a system long exploited for its muddiness, and a tax will provide funding for enforcement of those new rules- something long absent in an industry running wild.

This is a real victory for all Torontonians, (well, maybe not those few who selfishly pollute our streets with billboards for profit- especially the ones who break the law as a matter of practice doing so…) but it is a tremendous, long-fought, hard-won victory to all those who have been fighting so very passionately to see this happen! My congratulations to you all! It’s real hard to work on the legitimate side of the fence- it’s something I can’t muster the patience or energy for- YOUR patience and effort have achieved some real lasting change tonight, and even though I am not in your class, you make me proud to call myself a Torontonian- Congrats!!!

Hip hip for Ontario! Hooray for Toronto!