July 19th, 2010
Stapling a poster to a Saint-Viateur hydro pole
A Quebec Court of Appeal judge has ruled that Montreal’s anti-postering bylaw, which prohibits posters from being stuck to public street furniture, violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Montreal will now have to find a way to legally accommodate posters on public property.
We have local activist Jaggi Singh to thank for this ruling. Ten years ago, he was charged with sticking a poster on municipal property, and with the help of civil rights lawyer Julius Grey, he took his case through the court system. He was finally acquitted last week. The implications for Montreal are profound: independent musicians, artists, community groups and political movements, who have faced thousands of dollars in fines for sticking posters on lampposts and hydro poles, are now free to do what they’ve been doing for years.
Bengali poster, Park Extension
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February 21st, 2010
In a winter marked by rallies and protests, young people unhappy with Hong Kong’s government are taking to the streets in more ways than one. Over the past year, Hong Kong’s street artists have left their mark with posters, stickers and stencil graffiti that attack some of the city’s most prominent politicians and business leaders.
The most recent example is a poster of Henry Tang Ying-yen, modelled on Barack Obama’s now-legendary “Hope” campaign poster, that depicts the government’s chief secretary laughing, with horns on his head and the Chinese character for “kill” branded on his forehead. “Devil” is written at the bottom, in English, along with a short phrase in Chinese: “Political reform killer.”
The poster, which first appeared in the streets last December, is the work of local street art crew Start from Zero, which until now has been known more for its black-and-white stencil art and t-shirt designs than for biting political commentary.
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November 3rd, 2009
Montreal doesn’t seem to have been hit terribly hard by this latest crise économique, maybe because it has spent most of the recent past recovering from a string of much more substantial crises. At the very least, it has given us a break from the excesses of the previous years, a time to reflect on what had been going on. Some of the economic victims of the crisis, like the misguided Griffintown redevelopment project, are better off dead.
In any case, I enjoyed seeing the Berlin-based French artist SP-38‘s “Vive la crise!” posters around town. (He’s also responsible for an earlier spate of posters that read “Vive la bourgeoisie!” and “Vive la poésie!”) It’s a childish, contrarian exclamation, but it rings true to our instincts that the current season of change and contemplation is maybe, in some ways, a bit better than the blind exuberance of before.
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July 16th, 2009
When I wrote about the political and cultural importance of posters (not to mention their aesthetic contribution to the city by making it look messy and lived-in), I never considered that they could also have an environmental benefit. Luckily, two artists in Toronto, Eric Cheung and Sean Martindale, have demonstrated exactly how this can be done: they’ve turned lamppost posters into tiny planters.
How’d they do it? Spacing’s Jake Schabas has the answers. “First, they cut triangular shapes directly into the thick existing poster layers. Then they peeled back those layers, wrapping the outside edge of the cut-out posters back into the pole to form the cones.
“Only staples were needed to hold the cones in place and support the soil and flowers planted, with some cones needing extra poster paper wheat-pasted onto the underside. All of the cones have an aeration hole at the bottom and are placed in a corkscrew patter that allows water to flow from one plant to the next.”
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May 29th, 2009
I’d noticed it before, but the significance of the Democracy Wall, a bulletin board outside the University of Hong Kong’s main library, didn’t strike me until earlier this spring. When I first saw it, I thought its name was a wry reference to the brick wall that became a popular venue for dissent during 1978′s Beijing Spring, a brief period of political liberalization that occurred after the end of the Cultural Revolution in late 1976. But halfway through the school year’s second semester, I began to notice the ever-growing cluster of students who stared intently at the photos, essays and posters tacked neatly on the board. I took a closer look and realized that the Democracy Wall was more than just a reference to a short-lived burst of free expression in post-Mao China: it was a response to the June 4, 1989 crackdown on student protesters in Tiananmen Square, which traumatized Hong Kong and left a lasting impression on the city’s consciousness.
Each spring, as the anniversary of the crackdown approaches, the Democracy Wall plays host to a lively debate between HKU students over whether the Chinese government’s response to the student protests was appropriate. It’s a debate that echoes a much larger political division in Hong Kong. The conservative establishment, led by the business elite, tends to emphasize China’s economic progress since 1989, implying that even if what happened at Tiananmen was terrible, there’s no need to dwell on the past. The liberal, pro-democracy opposition insists that the Chinese government needs to acknowledge what happened, admit that it was wrong and reverse its policy of suppressing information about the events. The debate at HKU was complicated by the fact that many students come from the mainland, where they were never taught about the massacre. Some are shocked to learn about what happened, but others, like their conservative Hong Kong counterparts, insist that it was justified.
Interest in Tiananmen has waned in recent years, but its impending twentieth anniversary has reignited passions, and June 4th is once again a major issue in Hong Kong. A yearly poll conducted by the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme found that 61 percent of Hong Kongers feel that the central government must reverse its position on the Tiananmen Square incident, compared to 49 percent last year. 69 percent feel that China “did the wrong thing” in suppressing the demonstrations. Considering all of this, then, it seems that Donald Tsang, Hong Kong’s chief executive, did not have much of a feel for the public mood when he claimed in a meeting of the Legislative Council that most Hong Kong people want to forget about June 4th and move on. He probably wasn’t prepared for the wave of anger that then washed over him — consider My Little Airport’s hastily-made music video response, “Donald Tsang, Please Die.”
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December 27th, 2008
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Left, the Main between Duluth and Rachel in 1988; right, the former Laurier Cinema, now a bookstore, in 1988. Below, posters on a brick wall in 1996
November 26th, 2008
Posters for Pop Montreal, early October, in an alley near St. Viateur in Mile End
August 11th, 2008
Early in 2007, when the city was under cover of snow, somebody stapled pictures of lush gardens and inviting squares onto the wooden hydro poles around Mile End. “This is where we make good on life,” it was written below one of the photos. It was a nice gesture, reminding us that gentler weather was ahead, and perhaps commenting in on the state of our public spaces by showing examples of good urban design.
Last month, the same person (or maybe just an imitator) stapled new photos around Mile End. This time, though, they depict desert landscapes, not urban spaces. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
May 14th, 2008
Walking around this weekend I noticed a procession of odd posters around the Main: “Québécois et Québécoises ! Montréalais-Montréalaises ! Prenez part à un mouvement HISTORIQUE !” they declared rather excitedly. “Le mouvement boulevard Lucien-Rivard propose de rébaptiser le boulevard Saint-Laurent à Montréal : boulevard Lucien-Rivard.” Above was what appeared to be a mugshot, a streetsign reading “boulevard Lucien-Rivard,” a photo of Schwartz’s and a boulevard Saint-Laurent street sign that had been angrily crossed out.
“This has got to be a joke,” I thought to myself. The mere fact that the name “Mouvement boulevard Lucien-Rivard” rhymes seems to suggest that this is a jibe at the whole Park Avenue affair and the city’s eagerness to rename its streets. I made a mental note to check out mblr.org, the website advertised on the posters.
That website turned out to be an amateurish, seemingly earnest affair written in the same excitable prose as on the posters: “On parle beaucoup de Lucien Rivard ces temps-ci et c’est comme si tout le monde l’avait oublié!! Lucien Rivard fait partie de ces personnages historique qui dérangent on dirait,” it reads. “Trop de rues dans notre belle province portent les noms de saints inconnus ou de politiciens corrompus, ou encore des symboles serviles du système. Mais qu’en est-il des Québécois plus marginaux ?? Des personnalité hors-normes comme les Monica Proietti, le Grand Antonio, Denis Vanier ou Lucien Rivard ?”
As for why the Main in particular ought to be renamed, there’s an answer for that too: “La «Main» de Montréal est un boulevard au caractère symbolique pour tous les canadiens-français. À l’Ouest les anglais et les riches, à l’Est les pauvres canadiens français opprimé et manipulé par les institutions et les politiciens à la solde du pouvoir. Qui peut dire qui était Saint-Laurent ou ce qu’il a accompli ? Pensons-y… Quel rapport entre un homme d’église espagnol mort sur le gril en l’an 258 à Rome et la «Main» (à part les hot-dogs toastés?)???”
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October 6th, 2007
Downtown Vancouver has an abundance of high-quality new street furniture, thanks in large part to a proactive planning department that gives developers density bonuses in exchange for public amenities. So far, developers have paid for countless water features, a good number of parks, social housing, a permanent home for the Vancouver International Film Festival and even a new elementary school. But they have also shelled out for some small but important pieces of street furniture. Montreal could learn a few lessons.
The strange-looking bike rack above is a nice example. I found it on Davie Street near the corner of Seymour, just outside a large new condo complex. It is both attractive and functional, which is something that cannot be said for the woefully misguided bicycle rack design that is the standard across Montreal.
Like Montreal, Vancouver does not maintain street recycling bins. Unlike Montreal, though, it has come up with an ingeniously simple way to make sure that bottles and cans are recycled nonetheless. Many garbage cans in the city feature a “recycling rack” with room for five containers; put your bottle there and, soon enough, someone will take it to the bottle depot to cash its deposit. Vancouver has a virtual army of men and women who scour garbage cans for anything with a deposit value so these recycling racks are never full for long.
Many newly-developed residential areas in downtown Vancouver include superbly-designed parks and plazas. One of these, George Wayburn Park, includes a row of permanent metal sunchairs that face False Creek and the afternoon sun. It’s a nice touch that adds a bit of playfulness to its surroundings.
There are few legal spaces for postering in Montreal. You can stick a poster onto any construction hoarding, but these are monopolized by an advertising company called Publicité sauvage. There are also a handful of poster boards in the Quartier des spectacles and outlying boroughs like Lachine. In the most heavily trafficked places in town — exactly where legal postering space is needed the most — people are forced to glue their posters illegally to mailboxes, lampposts and other surfaces.
Vancouver is far more accommodating: hundreds of lampposts around the city have been fitted with casts to which anyone can stick a poster. City workers clear them every Tuesday.
October 12th, 2006
Concert posters are an essential part of Montreal’s vibrant independent music scene, which has in recent years launched a number of bands into international prominence, such as the Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade.
Posters. For community groups, musicians, activists, small businesses, even people who’ve lost their cat, they’re the most effective way to get the message out. They cover lampposts, service doors, construction hoardings and blank walls, livening up grey and depressing winters and turning underused spaces into interactive bulletin boards where the city’s goings-on are announced to anyone who might be interested. Despite their importance to civic and cultural life however, posters are an all-too-easy target for municipal politicians and bureaucrats who want their city streets as bland and orderly as a Lego metropolis. Posters might seem innocuous, but they are in fact a sign of a city’s vitality and diversity—how municipalities deal with postering is a measure of just how willing they are to accommodate that vibrancy.
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