Hey Absolut isn't it enough that you can put up billboards at will on almost any building in the city, advertise in the bathroom of every bar, and buy space in the back of every magazine, now you have to go and hijack our sidewalks with these chalk sidewalk ads?
We know that street teams have been hard at work stencilling busy streets with ads for bands, dance nights and even books. We think the city's graffiti enforcement officers should go after these guys, agents of corporations who may actually have money to pay fines and for the cost of cleanup, instead of graffiti artists who probably don't.
So we'll give you half-hearted kudos to Absolut for using chalk instead of something more permanent, at least you got that right. But the intent is the same. In Toronto, now it seems we can't even look down at our feet without seeing advertising. Fortunately the forecast calls for rain later this weekend.
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I don't think it's really that big of deal to see some color on the sidewalk. I hear this town gets pretty grey most of the year. I know what you mean about adverts being everywhere. But I saw the guys who painted that Absolute ad, they looked cool and like they really needed the money kind of like buskers (sp?) so if Absolute can take some of the busking pressure off, that's cool with me. I would like to see someone add to rendering, maybe have a plane crashing into the side of the bottle or something extreme like that.
Kevin
As of last year, Toronto's graffiti laws require businesses that become graffitied to clean up the graffiti. They are also responsible for proving that any paint on their building is not graffiti if they want it there, and if they are unsuccessful they have to pay to have that removed too.
So I guess then the city would have to go after itself to get itself cleaned up if someone decided this advertising was graffiti.
Money in the hands of local graffiti artists, self-cleaning on the first rainy day, one-off creative ads... doesn't sound so bad to me. If all advertising was so fresh, custom, unique, local and transitory, I might even like advertising.
People who don't like it could always just empty a bottle of water onto it (Toronto tap water, of course)
I think Chalkmaster Dave does corporate ads, although I can't seem to find images in his online portfolio.
These "chalk" drawings don't wash off easily.
And I just don't want to see one more venue for ads in public space. Period.
I have to land on the side of defending public space on this one. If Absolut wants to rent sidewalk space from a private company, or put drawings on land they own, that's fine. But the city sidewalk is public space, and we all pay to build and maintain it. Unless the proceeds of the sales of Absolut are going directly back to the City of Toronto to benefit us all, then I don't want to see those ads there. Advertising is not art, no matter how colourful or "extreme" it may be. If you want to advertise, you pay.
I don't care if it washes off; I still have to look at it in the meantime, and while it's half washed off it'll probably just be a big ugly blob. Also there's the slippery slope theory: chalk drawings today, what tomorrow? We have to put our collective foot down, no matter how trivial each individual violation of public space might be, or we'll eventually lose it altogether.
This is a really stupid question, but can just anyone draw on the sidewalk?
I think some spoof sidewalk ads are in order.
It looks like they were trying to get that Julian Beever 3D effect.
I've walked passed this several times, and it doesn't really pop out much. Oh well. At least it's aesthetic as opposed to the johnny stencils
Seriously, everything, even our freaking video games, have ads these days. Is it really that surprising, or that infuriating, that chalk ads are popping up? If anything it looks pretty cool. It's just a reality these days. If it REALLY offends you, wash it off.
Anyone can write on the sidewalk, including corporations. Too bad, so sad. But since it's public space, and we are all members of the public, why doesn't one of us wash it off?
Just cause you pay taxes doesn't mean everything public is going to be exactly the way you want it to be. It takes some effort.
Next: ads on the road.
Me again, on the pro-sidewalk ads side. I'm just as fed up with the insidious and continous creep of advertising into all of our public spaces as the rest of you. Yet not all new forms of public space advertising are necessarily so objectionable. These are neat, little, fun, local art-ads. They're what advertising should be.
Giant, ominous, skyline-polluting billboards on the other hand are real culprits. Likewise those unavoidable and manipulative bathroom ads by the likes of New Ad Media. These may be revenue-generators, but they have no redeeming cultural value.
Not all advertising is bad - encourage the good stuff and maybe there will be less resistance to dismantling the bad stuff.
Anyone who is drawing on the sidewalk is trying to attract my attention for a reason - to sell me vodka, or get me to throw money in a hat, or maybe just to look admiringly and say "wow you're a great artist dude". I don't view one goal as more or less pernicious than another; I just ask that the art be reasonably interesting.
When newmindspace scrawls all over public space you call it a "sidewalk mural" and it's only washed off "sadly".
http://www.torontoist.com/archives/2006/02/somebody_likes.php
But as soon as a corporation does it, hey, that's a "hijack" of our public space and the weather washing it off is "fortunate".
Interesting.
I don't agree that as soon as you have a commercial interest involved that they should be tagged vandals. If it livens up the sidewalk, i'm all for it.
Yep Nate. Newmindspace makes no money off their sidewalk murals and it's free speech. Absolut didn't pay the city for use of OUR sidewalk. "Corporate free speech" isn't the same thing and is in fact an incredibly dangerous idea.
Ideas are never dangerous, Ron/Boy Reporter, and free speech is rarely. Free speech is so valuable that we only place limits on it when they are "justified in a free and democratic society", to quote from the Charter. That means that you can only ban speech whose harm outweighs all of the good we attribute to the ideal of unrestricted free speech.
That's a really high bar and rightly so. If corporate interests could silence your speech because it was harmful to them and to the existing economy (and your speech is both) then your valuable voice would be lost. We don't want that!
What I take issue with is that when Newmindspace (or whoever) puts art up on a public surface without permission from the city or property management (or even when they do OK it), it is called vandalism. When a corporation does it, it's called advertising and hardly anyone minds.
I sympathize with the local artists' need to eat, but it's still a commercial message plonked in front of our eyes.
The relative social utility of sidewalk art is an interesting discussion. A case could be made that Absolut uses public space to promote a product in which the public has a demonstrated interest, and in so doing, provides a living to thousands of direct and indirect employees and their families.
Freelancers, on the other hand, use the same space to support only themselves, or in some cases, just to puff up their egos.
Anyway, I gotta go yell at the kid who keeps drawing that hopscotch thing on the sidewalk now.
More Art
No Advertising!
How do you like that.
Soon, the revolution is coming soon.
Xoro hanging out inToronto, Ontario, U.S.A.
Is it not good that the ARTISTS are making some money?
Yes, we can debate the coporatization of public space all day/week/year/eternity long.. but commericial art is one of the few ways for an artist to have a steady income.
My grandfather was an artist, and while he is well-known for his paintings (like the painting in the foyer of Latvian House!) he supported his family strictly through commerical ventures. Like advertisements. And product packaging.
Unless we get more patrons of ALL the arts, methinks there are few other places out there where a sidewalk chalker could make a living...
Great lets all pray to the advertising God, our savior.
Consume, Consume, Waste, Waste.
Xoro hanging out in Toronto, Ontario, U.S.A.
Boy reporter --
I respectfully disagree with your viewpoint in the sense that now you're telling me what is art and what is not art. It's the same act -- chalking up the sidewalk. Whether it's done by a hired shills of a faceless megacorporation or by a local starving artist -- it's still chalk on the sidewalk. The more relevant issue, for me, is evaluating whether the chalk on the sidewalk is of any aesthetic value. Not whether chalk on the sidewalk is a valid artistic expression.
In other words I agree with rek's comment. It *is* strange to treat the two acts differently -- and therefore they should *both* be acceptable. [Or unacceptable, if you have a more puritan world view.]
Since slapping up a sticker or wheatpaste or tag or unauthorized mural is considered vandalism, so should chalking up a logo on the sidewalk.
That said, I think the former is free speech and something should be done to recognize it legally (either as-is or some other way), and the later is corporate abuse of the commons and should get the corporation in question fined heavily.
Oops, I'm a hippie or something.
Rek, I don't want to misunderstand you but it sounds as though you're saying that stuff put up in the public space by people you like should be allowed, but stuff put up by people you don't like should be outlawed.
Is that correct or am I misreading you?
Patrick, do you want more Art or more advertising, or do you not see the difference between the two.
Xoro hanging out in Toronto, Ontario, U.S.A
Patrick - It's not whether I like the people involved, and it's not whether I like what they have to say.
Let's say I don't like Newmindspace or I don't like the stuff they put out there, and they've pasted up some murals or something. And let's say Nintendo (I heart Nintendo) pays a bunch of local artists to tag a graff-stylized "Nintendo.ca" logo all over the place. In my eyes, the former is an issue of free speech that should be recognized and protected, while the latter is a company circumventing city advertising regulations and paying people to do what is currently illegal. Legalize/protect the former, while the latter is still abuse of the commons.
This touches on the issue between Ron and Ben's posts. We (the people) have free speech, but it is in no way equal to what corporations can access. The costs of renting billboards or washroom signs, etc, are prohibitive for the majority of private citizens. Even with the money, groups like Adbusters find they still can't buy ad space if what they have to say contradicts the business model of the corporation with the ad space. This leaves us with free but grossly unequal speech.
To make matters worse, attempting to "reply" to these corporate messages on equal ground by altering billboards or transit shelter ads will get you fined or arrested for vandalism and mischief -- in effect placing protections on commercial free speech (in the guise of property laws) above and beyond what the private citizen can expect to receive.
I think it's a pleasant change. Usually the only chalk I see on Toronto's sidewalks is outlining yet another gun victim...
Oh snap Little Boy Blue!
To add to what rek has said, I'd like to point out another important facet of sidewalk ads.
No space is free. There is the cost to create the space, the cost to maintain the space, the cost of security (in the form of police or private security), etc. Public space is no different. The costs of public space is subsidized by the public through taxes and municipal funding.
When I have a billboard or a wall that I decide to sell as advertising space, I charge the advertiser for using that space. That charge includes the costs of maintenance. The costs of my space is subsidized through the money I charge others to use that space for advertising.
When corporate interests use my space, part of their costs are the rent they pay for it. By utilizing public space, they don't pay for that space--meaning they use that space for free, but the costs inherent in that space still exist. Who pays for it? Once again, the public does, through taxes and municipal funding.
Thus, when corporate interests use public space for advertising, the public pays the rent on that space. The public subsidizes the corporate interest's advertising, without any choice to refuse to do so. And by extension, the public subsidizes the profit margin of that corporation because advertising effects that profit margin.
Go into the offices of any corporation and see how long you get away with passing out literature, or hanging up posters. That corporation will not subsidize whatever cause you champion by giving you free advertising space. But they do expect that the public will subsidize their interests through free advertising space.
Rek - what I don't get is why Newmindspace should be protected under law, and not Nintendo. As Nate notes, if the two acts are the same, they should be treated the same.
If it's a matter of equivalency, corporations have more resources than private citizens principally because they represent tens of thousands of private citizens, not just a few disgruntled artists. They're not faceless machines, they allow millions of people to earn a living and to have a pension, and millions more to buy video games or whatever consumer crap they want at a reasonable price. Whether you like it or not, society has spoken and they'd rather hear from Absolut than from Jimmy the Starving Artist.
But lets say corporations should be treated differenly than "private citizens". Does free speech extend, then to citizens who want to paint swastika graffitti or put up Aryan Nations posters, or whatever you find personally distasteful? Or is it just Newmindspace?
As far as the cost of sidewalk space, I had assumed at one time that they must be paying for it. If not, the city is missing a revenue opportunity.
I think, Patrick, that many members of society are saying (in this thread, even) that they would rather hear from 'Jimmy Starving Artist,' as you disparagingly put it. You're entitled to your views, of course, but as a member of society at large, I ask to to please not speak for all of society as if those who disagree with you are not a part of it.
My friend and I saw the Absolut team putting one up today at Bloor & Yonge. The one thing my friend pointed out is that it's kind of weird to see them being done so close to other people's designs (especially this guys') who aren't sponsored by any corporation - in fact, they'd be happy getting any kind of money for their work.
Canadians respect advertising more then art.
Bunch of americans, find some culture or better yet stop praying to the advertising gods.
Advertising is a tax.
Advertising controls distribution.
Advertising controls thought.
Jill I must have implied that that somehow I'd rather hear from Absolut than from Jimmy the Starving Artist, which ain't quite true (although I do enjoy playing devils advocate on these threads). Jimmy and I have been friends for years.
But even if I did like commercials hogging up my sidewalks, you're right, I don't represent society as a whole and neither do you. However, to frame any kind of meaningful discussion, we have to define these terms somehow. In this case I'm using "society" to mean the group of humans that live in this country, who have collectively demonstrated over the years a preference for pissing their money away on commercial enterprises rather than artistic ones. I'm not trying to judge whether it's good or bad, I'm just pointing it out because it's the reason why corporations have all the money and Jimmy doesn't. If you don't like it, maybe you can convince people to buy sculptures instead of vodka and video games. Good luck.
Will you guys buy some vodka, already! Jeez.
Money, is that what you hold so dear Patrick. You must be very happy.
If I held money so dear I would surely have more of it. I am, however, pretty happy, not to say flattered to have an "anti-patrick" so early in my participation in this forum. So many people to thank...
I'm not an advocate of rampant corporatism, or capitalist rape of the planet or any of that nasty stuff that you're probably against too. But I do think that if you don't see things as they actually are, it's that much harder to change them.
We have a collective addiction to consumerism, the unpleasant results of which are now starting to become apparent through war, famine, climate change etc etc. Taking an us vs. them approach won't work, because it just pisses off the people that most need to be convinced. Minds have to be changed one at a time, and it's a slow and tedious process. In the meantime, who puts what on my sidewalk ranks pretty low on my list of concerns. Corporations? We created them, we feed them, we ARE them.
But that's just my opinion. Sorry for getting all philosophical on you.
You are wrong Patrick, das ist totaler Quatsch. You are a pathetic art director in disguise, if you want the truth we have had enough of the insane advertising that is in front of our faces everyday. We have had enough and the only way to get through to you and your corporate capitalist sympathy or empathy is to tell you to fuck off. fuck off and be careful, because the revolution is coming, sooner then you think.
Hanging out in Berlin
Ohh PS Fuck you Patrick
fake name : real views
real name : fake views
I hold them both in the same esteem as far as comment threads are concerned.
Patrick - Two acts can be the same but the context entirely different. Killing in self-defence, versus murder, for example. In either event someone may be dead and someone did the killing, but everything else is different.
As for putting up Swastikas (I assume you don't mean the Buddhist/Hindu variety) and Aryan Nation posters -- obvious bait aside -- these are, I believe, covered by our hate crime legislation which applies to more than matters of speech. Lacking said legislation, I'd say they're also covered by the same free speech laws that would protect chalk murals and wheatpastes. (This wouldn't stop me from "replying" to them.)
Corporations aren't people. They aren't hundreds or thousands of people. They're a legal construct given human rights out of a perversion of the outcome of Dred Scott v. Sanford (I think; I can't recall offhand) and adopted/spread elsewhere.
There was a time when corporations were formed to serve a public good (dig a canal, build a railroad, whatever) and governed by a very specific charter. Unfortunately those days are gone, charters mean very little if anything, violating the charter doesn't raise an eyebrow outside of a few towns in Pennsylvania, and corporations exist to further their own bottom line in whatever way they can at whatever expense they can get away with. That corporations pay employees is neither here nor there. Corporations do not speak for those people; they don't rent billboards because the guys in the factories are really jazzed about the new line of widgets, they buy ad space to help boost sales -- and every single employee could be replaced and that motive and goal wouldn't change.
Just as a sidenote here: to the best of my knowledge, swastikas are a lot more heavily policed than some guy's random tag on a billboard. I remember there was some uproar a year or so ago when someone had tagged swastikas around the construction site of the townhouses going up in the Bloor West Village - the builders had it taken down immediately and the police released a few statements looking for information.
Rek - I appreciate your well-reasoned response. Not withstanding the flak I'm getting, my thinking is not all that far from yours.
I think we either ban all, or no, sidewalk art. Whether the motives of the independent artist are purer and more valuable than that of Megacorp is a judgement call, and who gets to make that judgement? How do you decide what gets to go up and what doesn't? Once you decide to start banning certain types of free speech (I except hate speech, which I think can be sufficiently well defined that banning it doesn't carry a broader risk) you have opened a Pandora's box. How big is the company that can't use the sidewalks? Can Joe's Bicycle Repair advertise, but not GM? Would the dividing line be measured by number of employees, by revenue, by type of business? I worry when we start to apply different rules about what we can say depending on who's saying it.
Corporations are absolutely amoral, and in light of the fact that I pointed this out above I'm not sure why I'm being painted as some kind of corporate shill by people who clearly know nothing about me. However, pointless bourgeois revolutionary rhetoric isn't the answer.
Corporations are very susceptible to public pressure, to lawsuits, boycotts, and bad press. If people collectively didn't support companies that behaved "badly", they would change their behaviour. Unfortunately, people do support them, and it's these minds that have to be changed. Until we as a society modify our behaviours, we will continue to see abuse of the public trust. That's why I say we have to change one mind at a time.
Patrick - I think you're missing a key difference between what Joe the Starving Artist is spraypainting in an alley or stencilling on some construction site, and what Megacorp Ltd is chalking on the sidewalk.
We've already covered how advertising on public surfaces circumvents the allowances the city makes for advertising and the slice of the pie it receives for that space, but something else remains. One is a piece of art/personal expression, the other is an ad for a product or service. One gains the artist very little to no recognition (excluding tags, very few pieces of street art are ever signed by the artist, and almost never with their real name) let alone profit, while the other is part of a profit-driven campaign to increase brand/product awareness and feed the bottom line. One is expressive, the other is exploitative.
That's how I decide what should stay and what should go on surfaces that aren't sanctioned for advertising. If that means fining the Birds of Wales' label for the actions of their "street team" (read: corporation-endorsed vandals), so be it. [For those who don't know: Bloor West's sidewalks are still covered with Birds of Wales stencils -- painted on, I might ad -- months after the CD release they were promoting.] Joe's Towing Service? Don't see why not. Enshrine these rules in the city's guidelines for outdoor advertising, the one that governs the minutae of sandwich board dimensions, and there's no excuse for anyone.
To go on a tangent: Ultimately what I would like to see is the city designate virtually every alley wall a protected public art surface. I'd like to see every TTC station street-level platform turned into a community bulletin board. I'd like every street corner to have its own concrete pillar for people to tape up whatever it is they have to say. I'd like special walls constructed in the downtown and in parks for graf writers to paint.
Corporations already get the run of the place, it's time we got our own surfaces for replying.
And Patrick - People "collectively support" companies because it's very difficult, even with the internet, to inform the public that a company is behaving badly or their products are bad for you. This is what Adbusters finds out every time they try to advertise Buy Nothing Day on CNN, or get FOX to run ads critical of McDonald's.
Nike's voice is much louder than those of all its critics combined, and in the end it's their voice that's heard by most. Nike's certainly not going to criticise itself in an international campaign.
"One is a piece of art/personal expression, the other is an ad for a product or service" Generally true rek, but there is an underlying assumption in your argument that the former is more valuable or more "moral" than the latter. Many people wouldn't agree with you on that, and their voice has a right to be heard too.
Before everything starts dumping on me again, keep in mind that I'm playing devils advocate here. As someone who's old enough to remember when Toronto wasn't the Starbucks-infested Gap ad that it is today, I like your ideas about the use of public space for personal expression. However, I'm of the mind that any kind of censorship, for whatever reason, is a slippery slope, and deciding that someone is too big or too rich to put up their ads is not the answer.
While the MSM clearly have a bias in favour of the status quo (esp. in the US) it's very easy nowadays for people to find alternative points of view. Even excluding the web, alternative newspapers thrive in every city in North America, and anti-corporate documentaries like "Supersize Me', "Enron:The Smartest Guys in the Room" and "An Inconvenient Truth" get huge PR. Even though I can't watch Fox News without flying into a rage, I'm aware that I can change the channel and find John Stewart pretty easily. People just prefer not to.
Maybe I'm just too cynical, but it seems to me that there's a huge segment of the population making a deliberate choice as to the message they want to hear, which is "everythings' fine - go back to the mall". I just don't buy the argument that we're all unwitting victims of a corporate media conspiracy.
Patrick - I don't think it's a moral issue at all. When you start to weigh the "moral" value of art and expression and commercial work, you invite consorship. I think turning a blind eye to things like Absolut's public space advertising is a far steeper slope for us to slip down. They seem to get away with it scotfree, with no benefit to the city and all cost incurred by the city (see Robis' post #30). That's obviously not something the city or the public should encourage. What comes next, ads painted on the road? banners stapled to trees or hung from telephone lines?
We can't expect the media industry to change its behaviour because it would be the nice thing for them to do. And we can't expect, or wait for, society at large to decide billboards are ugly. We can force the change, however, while being a minority voice.
One way to do that is with city/municipal legal systems, electing council members that will stick to their guns on these issues. Get them to set size limits on billboards, ban illuminated outdoor signing, put extra taxes based on square footage of ad size, whatever. (Something that infuriates me about the TTC is that they sell out their riders for just 4 cents a fare, when they could ask for, and received, 25 -- what media buyer is going to say "no thanks, I don't want my client to be exposed to a million riders a day"?). We're letting advertisers dictate to the public what's acceptable for advertising in public space, and our public institutions are so afraid to risk the narrow slice of revenue advertising brings in, they let it happen.
I don't think it's possible to stop street art, let me just say that. Buff it or harrass the artists and it won't change much. Corporate graffiti at least can be traced back to the corporation. Look at the Sony PSP campaign from this spring. They tried to make it look like a grassroots thing with artists spontaneously throwing up characters playing with PSPs. It blew up in their faces (in part because they were telling their street teams to spray the characters on private walls). A corporation can't help but put its name or product in an ad -- that's the point of an ad, to create some familiarity with the brand. For now, at least, that's something we can exploit.
Thanks to reader Bunthen for sending me these shots of the Absolut bottles around Toronto:
http://www.torontoist.com/attachments/toronto_david/Jay02_Ruby.JPG
http://www.torontoist.com/attachments/toronto_david/Joe05_Apeach.JPG
http://www.torontoist.com/attachments/toronto_david/Raspberry_Richmond_st_03.JPG
OHH!! NO!!! There's been an attack on the sidewalks of Toronto, Absolut is taking the lives of Torontonians who walk the streets. WAH WAH WAH, reporters need to see the real picture and stop reporting things because they are only helping out companies such as absolut to advertise more by placing stupid topics such as this, speaking of which I'm going to the local LCBO to buy me a bottle of RUBY RED for tonight. On behalf of Absolut I would like to thank Mr. Ron Nuwisah for introducing this new flavor from the absolut family to the public. Very smart guy you are
Interestingly, after two weeks of rain, wind, and stomping feet, the "chalk" drawing in the St. Lawrence Market area still looks as new as it did the day it appeared. Must be oil pastels, which is really just oil paint in stick form, so these aren't temporary chalk drawings: they're paintings that at this rate will take months to wear off.