I’ve talked about some of the culture-jamming I’ve participated in here, but never posted any of the videos.
Here’s a recent jam of Chartwells, the company that has monopolized food service at both Concordia and McGill universities…
And here’s one of me playing Brandon You, CEO of PubPartout at the Plateau Borough council meeting last May. The city had been waffling on the issue of banning ad trucks from the streets of Montreal. They had already tried to ban them before, but when the ad truck companies sued, the city’s lawyer dropped the case prematurely.
Our colleague Erik Chevrier had been going to council meetings for over a year to bring up this issue and kept getting the runaround. Council members and borough mayors told him that they supported the cause but couldn’t do anything (despite similar moves working in cities like Vancouver and Toronto) and even suggested that the city streets weren’t their jurisdiction.
We showed up in support by theatrically opposing “Erik Chevrolet” and claiming that ad trucks were our right, and an essential step in the commodification of our culture. We started outside of both the Plateau and Ville Marie council meetings, then decided to go inside and present both Ville Marie borough mayor Benoit Labonte and Plateau Borough Mayor Helen Fotopulos (Foto-op-ulos) with the PubPartout PubD’Or Award for their allowing ad trucks to violate historic sites.
When you see the video, it’s also interesting to note that after our performance, the council voted to allow surveillance cameras on St-Laurent boulevard.
