i had an interview with s/c brookes and his partner on monday october 29th, they said i’d be charged with posting bills and that i would get a summons and a brief of the charges soon.
the ad company is claiming the cleaning bill for the two panels out the front of the courts is over $400, even though it was only $40 for those same two panels when covered in house paint (they had initially claimed it was $340, but revised it down when they thought we might be going to challenge that figure) — tenfold inflation perhaps?
they are also claiming a bill of over $2000 dollars for the cleaning of the ‘superstop’ on swanston street next to lincoln square — the cleaners must get a great hourly rate, can’t imagine it taking longer than 2 man-hours to pressure hose that shit off: $1000 per hour?
i was supposed to get a phone call from brookes and go in to get served with the summons and brief in person, but i still haven’t heard anything.
since the interview i have covered around 70 advertising panels across the city — haven’t heard anything about those either, even though it has been clear that i am the one responsible.
they sometimes get cleaned off pretty quickly, gone by sunrise that day, much like they were when i was only covering at the one location out the front of the courts — but some of them last a little longer, sometimes a few days.
it is hard to be bothered going out at 3am for 3 hours, about one hour after i’ve finally got to sleep, for a >20km bmx ride, when most of the posters don’t even last a day — my generally depressed state of c.b.f.edness doesn’t help.
the idea initially, when just doing the panels out the front of the courts, was not really to reach people through the posters on that panel, it was just to cause another episode with the legal system that would hopefully make a public issue out of advertising in public space.
the explanatory posters, forming a part of the covering of the ad, would then fall under the courts definition of the expression, which would make them a part of the evidence, part of the facts of the case, and discussion of my motivations might be slightly more likely.
i thought the police would be trying to fling me in jail almost immediately (as they had done in the past), but they generally seem not to care all that much about the postering approach, despite the fact it achieves the same purpose and requires the same cleaning as the old house paint approach.
the police nonchalance, together with the fact that the posters were getting cleaned off almost immediately out the front of the courts, made me think that if i had to keep postering for quite some time before the legal system would do anything, there were a few reasons to move around.
if i was putting up posters with messages intended for the public then it wouldn’t hurt for the public to actually have a chance of seeing them, moving around would make the posters harder to detect and likely to last longer — it might also annoy the advertising company more, making them put more pressure on the police to do something about it.
it would also alleviate feelings of pointlessness if i wasn’t going to all the effort to cover the ads only for them to be uncovered within a couple of hours, before anyone would have noticed — feelings of pointlessness remain unsurprisingly.
so i went from having the aim of causing a public issue through legal proceedings concerning a protest very few would see at the time, to aiming to cause a public issue through legal proceedings while at the same time possibly reaching people directly through the poster messages.
the website stats and a bit of positive feedback i have got show that a few people have noticed and are somewhat interested.
i ditched the idea of doing all the panels on one stop (which i did only once) because i thought if i spread the panels around (the number of which is dictated by the 4.6l paste bucket in my backpack), i’d have a higher chance of reaching someone who gave a shit and at least some of the panels would last a while, whereas a full stop would be noticed and cleaned within 24 hours.
i’ve also noticed a few instances of people scratching up the posters, sometimes it is just bored or curious people (kids i assume) ripping them up a little, but sometimes it seems to be politically motivated as all the messages have been removed deliberately — not surprising as so many people are horrible western fuckwits who i hope are reborn into the extreme poverty their stupid ideas sustain (they are self-made men anyway, they’ll still be able to enter the fortune 500 list by their 40th birthday, even if they are born black and penny-less in sierra leone).
i decided to give s/c brookes a call to find out what’s going on, but he is on leave until at least the 1st of december — the policeman at the desk couldn’t be fucked finding out when he was on leave until for me, he just knew he wasn’t on this roster and told me to ring back next thursday to see if he’s on the next.
i guess i just keep going then…
