ABSTRACT
Some years ago, I was walking through the Downtown Eastside with a camera, as I had to prepare some photographs for a lecture. On Cordova Street, I came upon what, at first sight, appeared to be a conventional sign, announcing a development application. However, closer inspection revealed that someone had carefully superimposed text and graphics over the official signage. This was not commonplace graffiti, but entailed considerable creative energy. In my mind’s eye, I see the artist working in the city archive, researching the history of the site and then, early one morning, slipping down to Cordova Street and quietly rearranging the text and map. Perhaps a passerby questioned the artist; likely not. Unlike the confident permanence of a municipal sign, the supplication, as I shall call it, has a transience and a lightness of touch. Rather than spray paint, Letraset was used. Even now, some of the letters were peeling away. Yet at the same time, the neat black letters and lines of the supplication appropriated the iconography of official signage, and its implied authority.
