The pen is truly mightier than the election signage.
I am a white english speaking Australian that grew up in the Gen-X time frame. I am a heterosexual male seperated from my wife but we get along real swell. I had a comfortable to difficult upbringing, as my father did not earn a lot of money. I am mostly a visual person who sometimes requires a hands on approach to fully understand something new. Although I ran away from school before finishing my junior certificate I have gone on to study at a tertiary level. I have had my own business and I also ran a large child care centre for several years. Recently I gave it all up to study full time, but I still work part time. I identify with many sub-cultures including street art, skate culture, and to some degree pop culture. I run a club of doodlers where there are no rules on what marks you make or who you have to be.
In the song "I should be allowed to think", TMBG mentions the use of magic markers to write on dry walls and uses the first lines from Allen Ginsberg's iconic poem Howl to set the scene for what would seem a dystopian future where you are not allowed to think, yet he is actually referring to now...
They Might Be Giants - I should be allowed to think.
In the movie Juno, Kimya Dawson sings a song about Loose Lips, she says:
"And I'll say fuck Bush and fuck this war
My war paint is Sharpie ink and I'll show you how much my shit stinks
And ask you what you think because your thoughts and words are powerful ".
Sticking it to the man, like Jack Black explains to his students in the movie School of Rock, so this woman does to her boss...
Sharpie's "Write out loud" advertising campaign.
Many street artists who have gone onto become famous artists started somewhere...
Sharpie's 2011 "Self Expression" advertising campaign.
Sharpie's "It starts with something" advertising campaign.
Street art and doodling can appear in the most unusal of places, sometimes it even happens inside under controlled circumstances...
Sharpies make people smile
Antithesis
I struggled to discover the antithesis to my sharpie. I considered it might be something like the machine, a large corporation or mining company, perhaps Clive Palmer himself or even the Liberal party. I mean they don't really seem to dig art at all. They're all about making money, keeping the rich happy and making a surplus. Take for example the Jackson Pollock "Poles" fiasco, where Whitlam was blasted by the LNP for wasting tax payers money on what they considered was a bit of rubbish, painted by a drunk person. The fact that it is now one of Australia's most famous piece of art work, is a credit to Whitlams very large balls. I think Whitlam was A-ok! Then there was Tony Abbott who is quoted as saying the art that hangs inside parliament house is merely avante-gard crap. I suppose Abbott's ideal art piece would be a quaint little oil painting of a shack sitting in the shade of a coolabah tree, what a dull little philistine. Qld has it's own art critic in Campbell Newman who in 2010, had council enter private property to clean up one of Anthony Lister's work, within hours of him having completed it.
But then it hit me, or rather my lecturer gave me the idea that the object that I truly rejected was the advertising for these monkeys. So after careful consideration, I realised he was right. Be it the LNP, Labor or the Greens, all of them are invading my visual space. Like weeds in the garden of eden as I walk the streets of my town. It is bad enough that we have no say in what we see on our streets, in regards to advertising billboards, bus stops and general advertising material. And then every election we are bombarded with the faces of people who seek to control our future. I did some research into the advertising of candidates and I was interested to find some strict rules (click here to read them) were in place. But unfortunately not all candidates follow them. For example election signs must be taken down 1 week after the election. Well two weeks later and here is a sign I saw just today whilst walking home...
I not only reject this but it makes me angry. It's another case of those who have the power are allowed to break the rules and get away with it. It's frustrating that the government can turn a blindeye to this kind of visual vandalism and yet take a dislike to another kind. Read here to see how the LNP plan to destroy all street art in Brisbane.
So what else can we do, but take our sharpies and draw little moustaches upon these election signs. I wonder if that qualifies for a synthesis?
1 comment:
Awesome !! ;D
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