Back in January, Sao Paolo enacted a city law that banned all outdoor advertising over a certain size. In the meantime, there have been a lot of signs taken down and nothing has yet gone up to replace them.

It seems so exciting to me that there is now all this space, that instead of being filled with advertising, there could now be public art. or just clean, quiet seeming space.

and a fairly relevant quote from Ways of Seeing by John Berger which I read today on the way to work:

Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. The choice of what one eats (or wears or drives) takes the place of significant political choice. Publicity helps to mask and compensate for all that is undemocratic within society. And it also masks what is happening in the rest of the world.