Is it crime? Visual spam? Community catalyst? John Morse’s “Roadside Haiku” raises a flap by Catherine Fox

Art & Design

Is it crime? Visual spam? Community catalyst? John Morse’s “Roadside Haiku” raises a flap

By Catherine Fox | Aug 28, 2010

John Morse’s “Roadside Haiku” project has ruffled some feathers. Keep Atlanta Beautiful has notified sponsor Flux Projects that the installation violates a city sign ordinance and that it faces fines if the signs aren’t removed.

WSB-TV, which first reported the dust-up, presented it as a version of ”But is it art?” — the creaky and deliberately provocative trope commonly used to diss contemporary art. But that’s not the point, according to Peggy Denby, director of Keep Atlanta Beautiful.

John Morse: "Roadside Haiku," 2010, Moreland Avenue

“I’m not opposed to poetry. I’m an artist myself,” says Denby, who is an avocational painter. From her perspective, an illegal sign is an illegal sign is an illegal sign (my apologies to Gertrude Stein). That goes for meta-illegal signs like Morse’s, which comment on and offer positive alternatives to ad pollution. Whatever their content, bandit signs are ”litter on a stick,” says Denby, who routinely informs politicians and businesses about the ordinance.

Upon receiving the notice, Anne Dennington, Flux Projects executive director, called a contact in the city’s Department of Public Works to ask for guidance. Her contact confirmed the existence of the ordinance but admitted that it isn’t always enforced, especially, it seems, in benign circumstances such as neighborhoods posting announcements of community activities. The city representative did not tell her to take the signs down, Dennington says.

“Of course we didn’t intend to do something illegal,” she says, “and we never planned to leave them up indefinitely. We wanted to put art where people might encounter it in their daily lives, in this case, while driving their cars.”

Denby is right about one thing. As with the “Living Walls” exhibition of graffiti artists around town, the meaningful question is not, Is this art? For my money, it is: What is (or should be) the nature of public space in a democratic society? Which leads to more questions. Who controls it? Is consensus possible? Is community possible? What role can art play?

I certainly don’t have the answers, but I see one in Morse’s “Roadside Haiku.” If art can be a catalyst in getting us to think about what we see, what we accept in our environment and leading us to the other questions, it has a very important role to play.

The signs are scheduled to come down October 31.

5 Comments

No Street Spam

1

Denby isn’t doing her job very well. Just look at our current and recent campaign cycles. Kasim Reed started littering the public right of ways in February 2009 with his campaign signs, before the 2008 signs were down. Many candidates followed his lead. His signs stayed up into 2010 and by February of this year, the current lot of campaign signs started popping up. I’m talking signs on public properties, not yard signs in residential yards. There are specific sign ordinances against campaign signs in the public right of way (sidewalks, curbs, medians, on/off ramps, parks, and other greenspaces).

I also send letters to campaigns that litter our public spaces and ask them to consider that they are breaking laws and show a great disrespect for the public and they want to serve. Lisa Baker, of Mr. Reed’s campaign (and city employee) replied that the “Mechanics” of campaigning seem to require that once one campaign starts littering streets, all campaigns must follow. She also acknowledged that she had read the ordinances. It seems our good politicians think their message is just as credible as Work From Home, Affordable Insurance, Lose Weight Fast, $99 Carpet Cleaning, and the various mortgage scams that litter our streets on prefab grafitti. Our cities and counties could make a bit if money if they actually enforced the ordinances and collected fines. (Denby and I agree with the “Litter on a stick” term, perhaps she read one of my letters to a candidate or saw my Creative Loafing posts on Grafitti and tagging.)

Ron Paul supporters actually answered your question, “What is public space?’ in their replies to me. His supporters beleive that public space, greenspaces, parks, medians, overpasses and even municipal buildings are paid for by taxpayers personal money. Therefore we, as taxpayers, actually own that public space and can treat it as personal space and litter it up in any we choose, primarily with campaign slogans, of course. In fact, the right for a candidate to “get their message out” supercedes other citizens rights to enjoy the same space “uncluttered”. Furthermore, other citizens (taxpayers/property owners) don’t have the right to clean up this mutually owned “personal” space that our co-owners litter with signs.

Atlanta is a city of “promote thyself”. The public space becomes increasngly cluttered with the detritus of advertising. Even billboards are now IMAX sized, multimedia lightshows, that blind us as we navigate the connector. Do we eventually just ignore all this “street spam” like we ignore (or block) banner ads on websites? Does anybody really read these signs? Or worse, does anyone actually think a business that tacks signs on utility poles, is going to provide them with good service? Do you think a candidate that litters public parks with signs actually respects citizens?

I appreciate the attempt to break the mundane with the unexpected. When is an ad sign not an ad sign? When it is art. Art is everywhere, we just can’t see it amidst the clutter.

28 Aug
No Street Spam

2

PS If the cities and counties will not enforce the ordinances for candidates and real street spammers, how dare they single out FLUX projects with threats of fines???

28 Aug
Peggy Dobbins

3

Great comment. Seems the only politic politics aired ad dressing public interest skirt it round about what is public what is art. I haven’t gotten around yet to scrutinize the Living Walls, but I saw Life Without Walls last night written and performed by recently homeless in Atlantans. Polly Garcia who coordinated it with encouragement from http://atlantaoutreachproject.org
has revived what for me theatre art’s supposed to be.

28 Aug
BPJ

4

If the city insists on the signs being taken down from telephone polls, etc., how about appealing to property owners who want to support public art to have a sign in their yard or window for a period of time? There are plenty of possibilities in high-traffic areas; some signs could be placed in areas which get plenty of pedestrians, which would make it easier to read them. (Yes, Atlanta does have some high pedestrian traffic areas.)

28 Aug
karru

5

Did you talk to the artist?

28 Aug

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