(And I don't mean no Devendra Banhart-type fucking hippie shit.)

In the last half-year or so, people/somebody has taken to stenciling/spraypainting objects on the pavement around Montreal, from intricate vines wrapped around traffic lines to light switches, ghostbuster vacuums, and owls perched on said lines. Last night, someone converted the bars of the x-walk right outside my place into a row of missiles. Poignant!

What're some examples of such refutations of our cultural code/symbol/signal systems (or other) that you seen in your town? Like people jogging in malls or ...

Dunno if this counts, but in Vancouver there's the Diana Project: an artist is trying to anchor concrete casts of female legs in 50 street corners around the city, symbolic of each hooker who's been confirmed murdered. Trouble is the concrete legs get stolen immediately, so nobody gets to see 'em.

Sure that counts. Unconventional use of a conventional (to us) space.

Are these the pig farm hookers to whom you're referring?

That reminds me of all the concrete cows they had littered around Calgary a few years ago. Except that was a corporate concept, and they were all really tacky. I'm glad to hear someone trying to get the word out about the murdered prostitutes. I have a friend who is in "the trade" and I fear for her constantly.

I think the impetus came from the Picton farm weirdness, but I believe the artist wants the symbolism to be taken in a larger sense (mainly that all hookers are seldom looked upon as humans).

In Toronto we had meese. I wouldn't count those because, like you say, it was a corporate/provincial thing (that I think we pilfered from the States anyway). Those things quickly became trash/museum lobby fodder.

There's these things...

...of which there are a hundred or so embedded in city streets all over the northeast (and a few in South America); they've appeared over the course of about ten years and seem to be the work of one person.

I love this kind of mysterious shit. Here's an article about them:

http://www.columbusalive.com/2001/20010 ... 90103.html

The Guerilla Girls have been pretty effective.



And, of course, my old haunting grounds Adbusters does (or did) a fair job of culture jamming by airing anti-TV commercials on TV:

Here is an example of just how unoriginal Vancouver is. They just auctioned off all the orcas we had eye-soreing up our city for the last 6 months or so. All the money went to a charity, or a few of them which is great but the idea of painting a bunch of animals and plopping them all over town is very very unoriginal.

An example :


But back to the topic at hand:

In this town someone was posting "Repent Sinner" cards and stickers all over town a few years ago. Either that person was really acitve in their stickering or some copycats followed along. They were everywhere but it slowed down and i dont see any anymore. I'm not even sure if it was meant to be taken seriously like that person was really trying to spread a message or just a joke. dunno.

when i was in prague in september, they had this thing called the "cow parade". there were 200+ cow replicas throughout the city, all decorated wildly by different artists. some were on top of bus stops, some on the side of billboards. it was all really cool, but i never found out what it was for.

It's the Civic Pride gimmick of the moment--they did angel statues in L.A. a few years back, and they've got apples all over NYC right now.

We had that shit here in Chicago two years ago. Stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Back in NYC, you'd get a dollar bill every once in a while with "Don't Fly Continental Airlines---Say No To Lorenzo" stamped on it.