A large, new billboard advertising a local restaurant has recently gone up at Ain Azleten - the first of its kind in the Fez Medina.
Is this visual pollution? Does it fit in a city that's 1200 years old? Should we care?
"I think it's great. It's very good publicity", said one shopowner nearby.
"It's really cool", said another medina resident, "though I think it should be at Boujloud or Batha where more tourists will see it. It's nice."
Foreigners living in the medina don't agree.
"It's absolutely disgusting", said one American. "How dare he do that to the medina! Soon we will have adverts like that throughout the medina."
A local guesthouse owner said, "I hate it, it's hideous. It looks like an invasion from the Ville Nouvelle and I fear it's just the beginning - there'll be more like it."
There are plenty of signs at Ain Azleten that point to guesthouses and restaurants:
but the one for F Lounge is much the biggest. The owner of F Lounge, Alejandro Ferrando, told The View from Fez that he had had the advertisement designed and produced in Barcelona, and had sought permission from the caid and from the owners of the house to which it's fixed. Alejandro comments:
"The medina is not a living museum, it is a real city with real citizens with real lives and dreams and needs. My publicity is only part of this life and evolution that the medina is experiencing and no one knows where it will all lead, but like all things alive, it's beautiful. And in a chaos of plastic chairs, some people are really happy to find a welcoming venue where they can relax and have a bite, and think about the real greatness of our city."
The View from Fez invites your comments.
10 comments:
I don't dispute that Alejandro has an attractive venue in the F Lounge, however his advertising sign doesn't belong in a World Heritage listed city. It may not be a "living museum" but Fez is certainly a city worth protecting from such crass commercialism. There are other interests at stake rather than simply his own.
The living museum is a real place with real people - but Mr F Lounge, it is not a place that needs to copy the Western advertising nightmare. Please take down your sign. We like your lounge, your shisha... but not this sign.
Driss B.
I suppose that the end of complimetary drinks & snacks for you at FLounge.
Such cyncism, Anonymous! It's not clear who you mean by 'you', but if you mean The View from Fez Team, why would we open a debate about F Lounge's advertising campaign if it meant we would no longer benefit from free meals? We don't.
Certainly the Fes medina is a real city with real citizens with real lives and dreams and needs. The Flounge billboard is, however, seemingly at odds with the tenor of this real city and shows little regard for it.
Adopting and importing the latest technology and design styles from Europe, without any apparent thought to its surrounding, hardly seems to benefit the evolution of the city. Moreover it only seems to add to the 'chaos of plastic chairs' that Alejandro seems to lament. (Perhaps the idea was to add to this chaos so that more people might want to escape from it, into the Flounge)
I have nothing against the idea of advertising the business, but it strikes me that there are more harmonious ways of doing this. Taking a quick tour of the medina shows an interesting and rich diversity of hand painted signs that seem well at home. It also seems a shame that something couldn't have bee designed and created in Fes for advertising this Fes business.
I think it's a very attractive advertising poster, and agree totally with Alejandro's point that "...(Fez) is not a living museum...".
I don't know that this sort of advertising would be allowed in other UNESCO heritage cities. Maybe Mr. Fez-lounge has confused the sort of adverts that one sees on large monuments in cities like Venice or Florence---please note that such billboards serve to mask restoration work being carried out on historical monuments and that the advertisor PAYS LARGE SUMS towards the restoration project for the right to hang such billboards...the billboards are then removed when the restoration is completed. If F-lounge is paying for a restoration project in Ain-ZlLeten great!! If not- REMOVE THAT UGLY BILLBOARD NOW!!!
I luv Flounge and Alejandro... but I hate the advertisment. His metal ones are fine... the billboard is obscene. Mind you, the anger in the Medina is great advertising! Everyone is talking about it. Even my guardian.
Love ya all
Gabby
There is no such thing as bad publicity! However... it is not very good art. I hope he didn't have to pay much for it. As an advertising exec, I could have done something more sympathetic to the surroundings.
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