Competition

Marseille, May 2019.

The official billboards for election posters appeared a few months ago. They were quickly overwhelmed by the portrait of a putative candidate… in next year’s municipal elections, before the material and symbolic order of electoral competition seemed to be restored.
That is, until 34 lists are validated, far exceeding the usual standards in this matter. As a result, there are not enough official spots on the panels. Certainly, poorly funded lists do not use posters or gluers, easing this new competition. But the politically equitable regime of an identical place for everyone is under threat.
Faced with this situation, the wild competition for voters’ attention is similar here to that of locksmiths for trapped residents outside of their homes. Far from being constrained by the space provided, collectively defining a panoptic where each list has the same place in the ocular field, it is by the temporal flow of the gluers that the candidates are limited.
Depending on the quantity of gluers and posters invested, it is this one, then the other and soon the third one that will saturate billboards. To restore equality in the electoral space, it would be necessary, like advertisers, to change the display technology: instead of still paper, screens would show lists and messages scrolling, with a frequency that would of course be controlled by a bailiff.