In Portland, Oregon- Clear Channel is suing the City in order to stop a one-year-old Public Art Murals Prgram that givers permits and funding to community murals (you know, the kind painted by actual artists and regular people).

There will be a trial to determine the outcome of this public art issue, beginning on April 12, 2006- Clear Channel (formerly AK Media) vs City of Portland.

Clear Channel successfully argued in Multnomah County Circuit Court back in 1998 that murals and other “signs” (billboards, painted wall ads, wall wraps) all had to be regulated by the City’s sign code (a 100 page book of rules on what can be put on a wall).

In effect, after Clear Channel won in 1998- public art no longer existed.

All we had left was “signs”.

This Langton Arts collaboration is a sickening example of Clear Channel’s continued usurping our right to artistic expression.

Is there no corner of our civic life that does not need a “gift” or a stamp of approval from a multi-national mega-billion dollar-a-year corporation?

Clear Channel seems to be moving strongly toward the goal of “providing us with our free speech rights”. And this is exactly what Clear Channel CEO’s have said about similar “public art” projects that they have done in Portland (including the Not A Crime graffiti art campaign- a billboard project done in conjunciton with Rumblefish).

Clear Channel must be stopped!!!

For more on this, see: indefenseofart.blogspot.com

… funded (in part) by Clear Channel.

San Francisco blogger and developer, Ted Rheingold spotted this excellent billboard prank. The artist (who so far remains unknown) reminds us how omnipresent surveillance has become in our everyday lives. Read Ted’s writeup and peruse his flic…