Look out!

I titled this blog ‘Ads in my way’ in reference to advertising placed in the public space, i.e. placed in people’s visual space. So a certain metonymical construction was at play there: the ‘way’ in ‘Ads in my way’ was actually meant as ‘visual way’; hence, physical 3D space taken for visual 2D space.
Lo, in this post which you are now reading the figurative has become actual: the above featured, just around the corner from where I live, is literally some ad in my way. One wonders what lack of common sense or minimum attention or basic regulation is needed to approve the placing of this piece of ‘street furniture’ in the middle of the sidewalk in everybody’s way.
One doesn’t need to be pushing a baby buggy, riding a mobility scooter or have visual impairment to find the advertising furniture very inconvenient.

May this perhaps serve as some sort of illustration of what I meant with the blog title. Doing the metonymy deconstruction journey back, advertising in the public space comes most often as an invasion of the public visual space, typically without people’s consent, yet with the (reluctant or less reluctant) collusion of institutions entrusted to manage that public space on behalf of the people. Thereby, an instance of the increasing desecration of the public realm.

It could be said that you could choose not to look at public advertising, but it’s not just that advertising in the public space is these days so pervasive, it also seems that you could smash your face into it if you didn’t look.

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High Road, N22
Wood Green
London