Its natural environment is the city, where it boasts a long record as proclamation, mobilization or liquidation order, placard, political poster, announcement or advertisement. From the Place de la Bastille to Tiananmen Square, it is here that the people reaffirm their existence and instigate events. The police traditionally have the job of controlling sign traffic and protecting the public visual order. In the 1970s, as the social management of the welfare state and the repression of hooligans failed to guarantee the intended sign peace, the street scene was privatized. Where, before, there had been police, now there were billboards.
Urban furniture becomes a purification plant that declares death on all city waste.
Resistance against this clearing of the streets is broken by billboard overkill, each of them instantly replacable by the logistical management in case of destruction. At first, the billboards were couch and end table in an urban home. Now we are suddenly expected to admire the art directors' posters as little paintings radiating the familiar intimacy of a Bambi. This is where iconoclasm fails. The only threat to these billboards is the indifference of passersby.