Turning off the Billboards
This chronicle is part of a collection of impressions gathered during numerous walks in the Argentine capital. They are all available in three languages (EN,ES,FR) and are part of the MIBA project developed on Senses Atlas.
It is now illusory to think that the city is shaped by the experiences and will of its inhabitants. The city is certainly a sensory machine, but it escapes us. Our 5 senses are constantly being called upon, but above all they are under attack. The cognitive impact of the urban environment is real, noise pollution is a seemingly incurable disease, the smell of exhaust fumes mingles with that of fast food restaurants. The acrid sensation that sticks to your tongue after a day spent in the city centre, the resistance to touching any urban element that by its very nature is “dirty”, as if the city were covered in a radioactive substance. And finally, the constant visual assault.
It’s hard to get rid of sight, as visually impaired people can attest – the city was never designed for them, it’s a constant source of danger. What’s more, sight is no longer enough, and hearing has become more essential than ever to getting around the city, even as we try more and more to isolate ourselves from the ambient cacophony.
Buenos Aires, like the great capitals of the world, is a constant flow of visual information. All you have to do is walk around the city centre for twenty minutes or so and you’ll be inundated with signals. The urban space is saturated with signifiers, signs and calls to consumption. The formal expression of this is the overabundance of advertising hoardings. The night and daytime visual contamination of these modules is infecting the city. The evil is so entrenched that it gives rise to a range of urban, architectural and sensory situations that tend towards the absurd.
They Live (1988) - John Carpenter
First and foremost, it’s a question of diversity of scale. From the simple 1.5mx1m Carapantalla Municipal, to bus stop advertising, from the LED panels on the top of the city’s theatres, to the imposing 7x7m billboards along the avenues, from the large banners on the blind medianeras to the gigantic column-mounted billboards along the General Paz. Every expanse of space is exploited.
This proliferation creates a sensation of saturation, but also eliminates any illusion of urban unity. The colourful panels of saturated colours are spread out in every dimension, each one intended to imprint itself deep in our retinas. This chromatic excess confuses the user. Essential information, such as the colours of signs and semaphores, is diluted behind the mosaic of advertising. The city has become a palette of gaudy colours, overlaid with messages urging people to consume.
Screencapture of D&S MediaGroup Website - Advertising in Buenos Aires
These advertising structures have come to devour the city’s architectural landscape. They cover, hide and crush buildings, from the Saavedra houses lining the General Paz to the hotels on the 9 de Julio, and the theatres on Avenida Corrientes.It is no longer metaphorica, the metal structures supporting the large posters are swarming across the roofs of buildings half the height of the message they support. A difference in size and a spatial hierarchy illustrating a certain order of priority: consumerism is more important (and comes above) the inhabitant.
This flirtation with virtual overdose is coming to life on the city’s avenues: at almost regular intervals, the motorist or traveller sees the billboards go by, the buses that used to be noticeable for their remarkable and distinctive colours now cross the city inundating it with advertising messages encouraging people to place bets or lose their money in dubious training courses, the new LED panels that are flourishing more and more are full of more or less controlled advertising animation that denies us darkness. In the city, the visual signal is not just static; it has set itself in motion to accompany us, precede us and follow us. Escape seems impossible.
And yet, during the covid, the A002 national road linking Ezeiza to the capital was emptied of its cars and its large advertising hoardings, leaving only the frame emptied of its posters, a strangely soothing situation. Here and there in the city (as it has been the case for years, for example, at the exit from Las Heras metro station), huge black billboards seem to be waiting to be rented out but in the meantime they offer a brief visual respite. These large screens provide the comfort of a switched-off television and the illusion of an advertising-free city.
