ARTUNG! Montreal Falls to Massive Ad Takeover Project

On 08-22-10 I joined forces with 60 artists and a fantastic group of organizers in Toronto to bring to fruition the second street ad takeover, ToSAT. It was a grand success and led us quickly to the third venture in the series, MaSAT. I believe yesterday, completely independent of PublicAdCampaign, those same organizers launched "This is not an ad" in Montreal. While I am unsure of the exact numbers, it seems they replaced more than 200 advertisements on the streets of Montreal with the work of artists and individuals in a highly specific protest of recent actions by major media companies trying to force community acceptance of their right to corporate free speech. I repeat, this is not a PublicAdCampaign project and was a massive street ad takeover of monumental proportions. I contributed a single piece shown above. Congratulations to everyone involved, you guys are all amazing and I hope to see many more large scale takeovers around the world!

The long story short is that Montreal's Plateau Mont-Royal borough wants to ban billboards while media companies want to put up billboards. The ad companies, in light of the communities rejection of their media interests, have made it abundantly clear that they will fight the community in a lengthy and expensive legal battle if they do not comply with the media companies demands. Sounds about right to me. In order to bring more light to this issue, ARTUNG! took back the streets and created a website where you can see it all. Start with the ARTUNG! Map as it is an impressive feet in and of itself.

Congratulations to everyone in Montreal for a job well done!!!!!!!!!

Original poster design

"Along with our elaborate identification system, Ceci n’est pas une pub also digs a little deeper. It brings to light the current battle that’s being fought between private and public interests, not only within our streets but within our communities and minds. By opening spaces for collective discussion, we hope to deconstruct profit-based power structures and work towards issues directly affecting our communities like: The deportation of our friends and families, family and sexual violence, criminalization of poverty, privatization of the public services, the environment, police brutality…

Born out of a collaboration between individuals of various backgrounds, politics and artistic abilities, Ceci n’est pas une pub is dedicated to strengthening, enlivening and challenging the design of our public space.

Our streets should be a canvass for our communities, not for corporations!"