found(ed) object(ion)

i found these posters, plastered up on bus stops in frankston.

i found them so despicable that i tore them down. thankfully, no one seemed to want to stop me doing that.

i found the whole experience completely weird. it's not like frankston isn't without its fair share of violence and rape. not to mention its filthy drug habit and general trashiness. it's just that it's mostly white there.*

i found the whole dialectic aspect of it kind of strange too - some racist wanker puts up these posters in prominent places, trying to sway a particular section of the public, and then i come along and tear it down - my action conveying a specific retort. and that , in a free country as ours purports to be, both actions are as 'valid' as each other. as much as i wanted to vomit all over the creator of said racist propaganda, i value the freedom of a politic which supports this kind of exchange - where he (and i'm being gross in my gender generalisation here) puts up shit i don't agree with and i get to take it down. equal and opposite reaction again.

i found it quite important to be having a 'remote' clash of values, in the public realm. on equal footing almost. rather than it being facilitated through the all-powerful broadcast media, or the insidiousness of behind-closed-doors-deals-and-policy that happens at either end of the big power structures. it was almost mano e mano. one citizen against another in hand-to-hand combat.

i found out what what frankston looked like according to its sound a while back. it might be interesting to see what dandenong sounds like. and compare the two - see what frankston would sound like if it ended up like dandenong.








*disclaimer: for those not from melbourne, frankston is a southern outer-suburb which has had a bad name for years. it's pretty low on the socio-economic scale and has a disproportionate amount of young pregnancy, amphetamine abuse and unemployment. superseded only by toorak (i jest, just). and my generalisation about frankston is just that. of course there are amazing people in frankston, doing some fantastic things. and plenty of ordinary people doing lovely ordinary things. naturally, this post isn't really about them.