I Deface Paris Billboards

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

French activist group suggested poster size

At least that is what Serge Debrebant, a member of “Deboulonneurs“, the French activist group told the FT on Saturday!

The article which is online here is worth a read.

The “Deboulonneurs” or the Dismantlers, formed 3 years ago, deface advertisements to protest against their (perceived) influence on society.

Serge Debrebant is in affect another one of the many against ‘visual clutter’ (or ‘urban pollution’ as we heard it called in Canada) that we have written about previously.

In the article he was quoted as saying “We are not against advertising in general, we just want to reduce its impact on society. Since a lot of billboards in France are gigantic, we want to limit their dimensions to 50cm by 70cm. That’s the size of posters in political campaigns. We also want to reduce the number of posters in public space, especially since a lot of them are illegal”

Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinions, the Deboulonneurs at least promote non-violence although their acts of vandalism are of course criminal – they do seem to end up in court though it seems that the courts don’t take the offences seriously enough to prosecute to any large degree (token fines seem to be order of the day).


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