Stickers, Paris and a cabin
Knowing a city through its stickers and posters
After an intense month with two markets in two major cities in the Netherlands, I took the week off for my birthday (that’s the reason why there was no newsletter last week) and spent the weekend in a remote cabin in the province of Champagne, France (Polaroid on the right).
But before going into the middle of nowhere, I spent a day in Paris and couldn’t loose the opportunity to do some sticker bombing and explore some of the city’s street art. Initially, I wanted to do some wheatpasting but the logistics of carrying the posters and making paste in the hotel room dissuaded me. In the end, I only had time to walk around in a small part of the city but I was positively surprised by the wheatpasting culture it has (Polaroid on the left). I feel that while Rotterdam also has a strong presence of art in the public space — with tags, stickers, murals and graffiti — postering is ill-represented.
On that note, it was amazing to share my work during the last week’s market in Rotterdam. I was really surprised that a few of the visitors recognised some of my wheatpasted posters I had been spreading around Rotterdam: “You live in West right? I’ve seen this image around”. Mostly surprised because I have only a few posters up but I guess they are working!
Reflecting on that, I think posters work better than stickers when the message is targeted to people outside of the street art bubble. Normally, people that notice stickers tend to be the same ones that also place them. However, I feel that noticing stickers is a great exercise and way to experience a place: You start to know which stickers are from where and who, you might recognise stickers from your own city and you can get a sense of current political or social issues through the messages in the stickers.
So, my piece of advice, pay attention to stickers while you walk through the city even you don’t do the stickering yourself. However, if you want to do the stickering yourself, these just arrived at my doorstep and you can get them on my online shop:
