on friday the 28th of march i filed (gave to the supreme court registry) and served (gave to the prosecution) my outline of submissions for the appeal in the case of magee v wallace, being heard in the supreme court on the 7th of august 2014.
here is a pdf copy of said outline of submissions
when i went in to the court precinct to file and serve i was greeted by this amazing advertisement on the very tram stop shelter i was jailed for painting upon:
the dreary magistrates’ court is in the background of the the above photo, where i was sentenced to jail a number of times, and in the background of the below photo is the clearly-labeled, and considerably more grand, county court.
i guess the implication of these naughty ads is that if you are a young ‘cool’ person who would like not to be boring conformist (and would also like to throw paint everywhere as part of a generally wild existence) then a good thing to do to express this desire is to purchase shoes from a company owned by nike — i must most strenuously disagree — i could not think of a more boring, conformist and uncool thing to do.
it is all pretty awesomely fucked, and i don’t really know what to say because there is too much to say and it is all better understood by simply having a bit of a think (if any of that sort of thinking is still necessary for you personally).
it has all been the same in advertising since the the situationist critiques of the 60’s — constant reference to ‘revolutionary’ products and the offering of modes to express your desire to break free which are all essential to your continued exploitation — i guess the positive thing is that rebellion aimed at escaping boring subservience is still ‘marketable’ — if only we could express the desire coherently, target it effectively, then we might actually be able to stop our global ‘civilisation’ from being so murderous and destructive (and i might not have to experience life as an awful job i can’t wait to see the back of).
i bet the ad company didn’t get permission from melbourne city council to ‘post bills’ on the foot path, on ‘property’ they certainly don’t own.
i have pulled down many whole shelter ads such as this, but when it comes to being charged i am never charged for removing the sticker from the tram shelter glass (which comes off very easily if you’d like to know), only for postering over the council-sanctioned ad panel — this is interesting considering these stickers would be far more costly to replace than any pressure hose cleaning of posters, in fact i have never seen the stickers replaced, a different ad simply appears at that tram stop after a short while.
i guess this is because they only print the right amount of stickers for the number of full shelter ads purchased, and by the time the stickers could be re-printed and fitted, the ad space hire period would be over — i hope the ad company is honest and informs the company that placed the advert that what they paid for was not delivered completely as contracted, then appropriately refunds them.
apart from the ridiculous idea that the ad company have just never realised i have pulled down the whole shelter sticker — an idea made even more far-fetched by the fact that i leave pieces of sticker to make it clear to observers (and ad company cleaners) that the whole shelter ad-sticker has been removed in an authentically unauthorised way — the only logical explanation is that the ad company doesn’t report this to the police because they don’t have permission, have no legal rights to place stickers over the whole shelter structure, and are actually committing an offence by doing so.
advertising permits are required for all advertising spaces: billboards; tram shelters; even businesses wanting to have a sign out the front of their own shop, on their own property — i guess the ad company that does the whole shelter ads has never sought permission for the whole shelter ads, might not be able to get permission if they did apply, and might have to pay more for the expanded ‘right’ to sell access to public space and the minds of citizens that they do not own — maybe it would just mean a whole lot more bureaucratic fucking around, and on a cost-benefits analysis, safely assuming charges will never be brought and the council will never put its foot down, the ad company has decided to just do whatever they like.
i’ll be bringing all this up in court, when i have a chance to question the representative of the ad company about the omission of the stickers from the police charge sheets — it’s great not giving a shit, because i am decidedly untroubled by slim possibility of some kind of backfire.
here is a photo of the drips of white paint on the ground (an accidental part of actions constituting a genuine form of political expression) that should have been protected, which was instead harshly punished, next to the fake spill of paint that is indefensibly illegal (corporations having no recourse to a legitimate freedom of expression defence to the charge of posting bills) but never punished:
here is a shot of the ad with the supreme court in the background, a building considerably more grand than the county court:
i guess we are all supposed to be awe-struck and intimidated by such architecture, and even more intimidated by all those beautiful wigs donned by those highly educated and skilled mouth-gigglers who strut their stuff on the inside, who team their wigs with nice little silky numbers (not to besmirch wigs and silky numbers in general, which can be simply stunning on a real woman or man)….. but i couldn’t help but notice the crumbling facade of this grand projection of power:
the foundations of this building, which self-consciously poses as dark solid rock from deep in the earth, is breaking down to reveal a crumbly, man-made material that could be rubbed away with a twig — the symbolism accurately reflects the reality of a system that would dare state that it protects justice, as if justice exists to be protected, in a world such as this — the shoddy foundations are crumbling under the strain of the systems’ glaring logical contradictions.
i expect the court to seek to prosecute the legal personality of ‘nature’ for criminal damage to their property through its innocuous sounding ‘weather’, which also infringes the courts’ human right to not to have their reputation unlawfully attacked.
