I created small stickers using the terror silhouette and started putting them around the streets of Home Watch Areas. It was very interesting to work in such a small scale as I have not done it before. Even though I have been working in the streets and dealing with public surfaces and materials like concrete, bricks, metal or wood as a background I have always used it for much larger pieces.
Placing tiny stickers of an "artificial terror" figure ,as it is presented to citizens by signs ,is an ironic comment on the idea of public danger itself as the danger is scaled down to something totally harmless, even unnoticeable.
On the other hand, the action of spreading those "dangerous" figures around the city prompts a question. How is this area considered "Home Watch Area" if someone is able to treat public space as he desires?
The scenery changes when two or more of these figures appear together. Are they more threatening now? Maybe for ants.
Another way to present the idea in the streets was to place the stickers in places where people have something to read. An invasion to public space will not ask for permission, there it is, appearing where you do not expect.
Moreover, I experimented more by looking for places where the figure of the sticker would conceptually interact with the background. What if it is placed on a sign that warns thieves that they are being watched?
Perhaps it enhances the message of the sign itself as the thief appears to be so small or even helpless before the eyes of the Police.
On signs with street names:
In a dialogue with stickers by other people in the streets:
On the pedestrian crossing buttons:
Last but not least: On promotional platforms for Norwich's sights. Going against the public branding of a city and how it is chosen by authorities to be presented to the public. Obviously, signs that indicate actions or even the existence of anything related to crime are deliberately avoided. Norwich is branded as a "Fine City" and when it comes to promotion no one would like to even mention chances of criminality. However, some tourists will come across the "terror silhouette" sticker whilst looking for the next sight to visit.
Alternatively we could read:
"Discover Norwich, a fine city with chances of crime"
"Discover Norwich, a crime city)"
"Discover norwich, discover crime"
But who would want such a public image for a city to be presented as a representative image?
No one tells us though that we cannot handle the image of the city we inhabit according to our likes, even if legislation is harsh when it comes to public property defacing, there are still ways to interfere and alter the public space.
"It is easier to forbid people to see than to allow them to think. One decides to control the image to guarantee the silence of thought, and when thought has lost its rights, the image is accused of every ill under the pretext that is out of control. The violence perpetrated against the image, that is the question. In the violence of this entire debate around the visible, we must understand that the violence of the visible is due to the war that is being waged against the image, the war against thought.... To defend the image is to oppose everything that eliminates the otherness of the gazes constructing the invisibility of meaning. The power of the image is equal to the voices inhabiting it."
Daniel Fabre, "Gavroche et l'Elephant ou Vivre aver le monument," in L'abus monumental?, Paris, 1999, p.278
Another text on a touristic map invites people to download an app on their phones in order to receive information about events and the city's heritage. A sticker next to the mobile phone logo fits well the visuals of the board. Without being mentioned in the text or having a descriptive text of its own, it makes an implication about something unresolved. Are the tourists now in a comfortable position? Are they really ready or willing to "Discover Norwich"?
"As soon as cities or territories (districts, regions, countries) start claiming to be products to be sold on the market, they logically adopt the attributes of brands. What are the effects, the ravages of those impositions of symbolic violence on such vulnerable systems of human settlement?
It is no coincidence if, since the 1960s (Marlaux's law of 1962 on protected sectors), the concepts of historical urban groups and urban legacy have now joined that of the historical landmark. Forged in England in the second half of the 19th century, these concepts only won recognition in France when the worst threatened. In a word, the city is becoming a historical landmark and [a] question arises that splits in two, i.e., how is one to both preserve this legacy and take on the future of the non-city that is coming after it?" - Francoise Choay, Pour un anthropology de l'espace, Paris, 2006, p.42
