{"id":1126,"date":"2008-07-16T22:27:59","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T03:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2008\/07\/16\/sidewalk-cleaning-graffiti\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:40:24","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:40:24","slug":"sidewalk-cleaning-graffiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/16\/sidewalk-cleaning-graffiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Sidewalk-cleaning graffiti"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/christopherdewolf\/2633484684\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3103\/2633484684_6687a995c4.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Guerilla advertising in the form of sidewalk stencils is nothing new&#8212;<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/16\/making-the-ad-creeps-pay\/\">Julie&#8217;s post below<\/a> details the city of Portland&#8217;s lawsuit against one company that made persistent use of this medium, which is illegal&#8212;but a series of Telus ads I saw recently on McGill College Avenue struck me as unusual. Instead of being painted on the surface of the sidewalk, the advertisements are actually created by <i>removing<\/i> dirt from a particularly grimy section of it. <\/p>\n<p>As with most forms of guerilla advertising, this one has its origins in street art: in this case, a peculiar form of it known as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reverse_graffiti\">reverse graffiti<\/a>,&#8221; in which art is created by selectively cleaning dirt from walls, sidewalks and signs, like a more elaborate version of drawing something on a dirty car window. A couple of years ago, the British artist Paul Curtis, also known as Moose, made use of this technique to create some remarkable pieces of art on the streets of Leeds and other English cities. To fund his activities, he also sold his services to companies such as Microsoft and Smirnoff. Leeds city council wasn&#8217;t too pleased with Curtis&#8217; work; it declared it to be vandalism and tried to force him to clean the walls he had supposedly defaced. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Leeds residents want to live in clean and attractive neighbourhoods, and expect their streets to be free of graffiti and illegal advertising,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/uk_news\/story\/0,3604,1328139,00.html\">one Leeds official said<\/a> in 2007. &#8220;We also view this kind of rogue advertising as environmental damage and will take strong action against any advertisers carrying out such campaigns without the relevant permission.&#8221; While such a tough stance might be seen as admirable by some, it smacks of hypocrisy: if the city had kept its property clean to begin with, it wouldn&#8217;t have been possible to create reverse graffiti. Needless to say, passing a law prohibiting the unauthorized cleaning of public property could be problematic, not to mention absurd.<\/p>\n<p>So what to make of the Telus ads on McGill College? Unlike Paul Curtis&#8217; work, which had artistic merit, these have none. But they aren&#8217;t necessarily illegal, and if they city wants to clean them away they will only be doing a job that it should already have done.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.inhabitat.com\/2008\/06\/18\/reverse-graffiti-san-francisco\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.inhabitat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sfreversegraffiti1.jpg\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reversegraffitiproject.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.inhabitat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sfreversegraffiti2.jpg\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<i>Reverse graffiti mural created by Moose in San Francisco as part of a campaign to raise environmental awareness. Photos courtesy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.inhabitat.com\/2008\/06\/18\/reverse-graffiti-san-francisco\/\">Inhabitat<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Guerilla advertising in the form of sidewalk stencils is nothing new&#8212;Julie&#8217;s post below details the city of Portland&#8217;s lawsuit against one company that made persistent use of this medium, which is illegal&#8212;but a series of Telus ads I saw recently on McGill College Avenue struck me as unusual. Instead of being painted on the surface<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/16\/sidewalk-cleaning-graffiti\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Sidewalk-cleaning graffiti&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7830,7832,7839,29],"tags":[320,40,2736,48,12,2310,2737,2738,584,1408,2512,2739,1120,25,2735,353,2734,297],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communication","category-culture","category-neighbourhoods","category-streetscape","tag-artist","tag-communications","tag-dirty-car-window","tag-downtown","tag-graffiti","tag-guerilla-advertising","tag-illegal-advertising","tag-leeds","tag-mcgill-college","tag-microsoft","tag-official","tag-paul-curtis-moose","tag-portland","tag-public-art","tag-rogue-advertising","tag-san-francisco","tag-smirnoff","tag-telus"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Sidewalk-cleaning graffiti - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2008\/07\/16\/sidewalk-cleaning-graffiti\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sidewalk-cleaning graffiti - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Guerilla advertising in the form of sidewalk stencils is nothing new&#8212;Julie&#8217;s post below details the city of Portland&#8217;s lawsuit against one company that made persistent use of this medium, which is illegal&#8212;but a series of Telus ads I saw recently on McGill College Avenue struck me as unusual. 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