Last weekend public space advocates in Toronto performed a large scale guerrilla art installation, "hacking" into pillar advertisements and painting over billboards; cool! Operating under the moniker TOSAT--short for "Toronto Street Advertising Takeover--they replaced forty-one pillar ads and "redesigned" around twenty billboards. Apparently, the group specifically targeted illegal advertising--structures that sound like they are largely installed overnight and contravene various Toronto bylaws, but end up staying put because city enforcement is so lax.
The idea of "illegal" advertising in cities has never really occurred to me before, and I wonder if the same sort of thing happens in Vancouver. I suppose I'm naive, but it just seems ridiculous to me that large, professional, corporate companies would engage in something so juevenile: "We'll build it, 'cause who's gonna stop us--na nah na nah boo boo!" Seriously? For real, Pattison Group?
Have any of our Toronto readers seen any of the "hacked" signage? What is the word on the street--do people like that new look?
No comments:
Post a Comment