All these bands which advertise their new album or gig everywhere sure leave some marks around town! A writer named Ian Dille, from Austin Texas, wrote an article for Slate magazine, saying that his wife’s store had been vandalized by Arcade Fire! A stencil of the famous logo ‘Reflektor’ appeared on a wall of the custom picture framing shop where she works, then, in the following days, the wall was plastered with Reflektor posters! And he wasn’t very happy about it, admitting being a fan of Arcade Fire, but not appreciating this ‘commercial promotion’ using the wall without permission, even calling this ‘guerrilla marketing’ ‘immature’ and ‘socially irresponsible’.
His main argument is that this would have been acceptable from an unknown young street artist, who is trying to convey a message, but not from an internationally known band which goes on stage to accept Grammy awards. Is he right? Beside the fact that this wall had already some ‘authorized’ graffiti on it – which may have led to believe it was alright to add more – Arcade Fire can’t be held responsible for every stencil and poster put on some random wall by its street team! But the argument is that a band, which has reached this level of notoriety, shouldn’t use this kind of street tactic anymore,… as if they were still underground and outlawed somewhere.
I see his point, despite their overwhelming world-wide success – have you seen how everyone got totally crazy when they released the ‘Reflektor’ song a week ago? – the band plays with its image, and uses a guerilla DIY-look-like campaign to promote the album… but they are barely the only ones!
This whole scene makes me think about a Banksy piece I saw at the MOCA a few years ago: a guy with a pot of paint kneeling down as if he was praying in front of a giant cathedral-window-like graffiti, basically illustrating how street art has been diverted from its rebellious and outlaw origin, and is now venerated like an established form of art, shown in museums and bought for millions of dollars. By painting this, Banksy was making fun of himself, and Arcade Fire? They took Dille’s complaint very seriously and Win Butler himself sent him a handwritten note:
‘Dear Ian,
I’m really sorry your wife had to put up with that. The logos were supposed to be put up with water soluble paint or chalk so they would come off in the rain. Somewhere down the line, someone must have gotten confused and used paint. The chalk campaign was supposed to echo with Haitan veve drawings that are done in chalk or in the dirt. It is sometimes hard to control all these tiny details when you are doing something on such a large scale. Hope to meet you at a show when we are in Austin.
All the Best’
I am speechless, Arcade Fire should know that I have a large wall that could totally receive some Reflektor stencils, posters,… and I would only complain to receive a note from Win.
