This Space Available

From 240 hours of film, 160 interviews, and visits to 11 countries on five continents, "This Space Available" charts a fascinating variety of struggles against unchecked advertising and suggests that more than aesthetics is at stake. If Jacques Attali once called noise pollution an act of violence, is visual pollution also such an act? Should we also consider, as one Mumbai resident says, "which classes of society can write their messages on the city and which classes of society are marginalized?"

Gobé offers a canny generational analysis of visual pollution, laying blame not just with the advertising juggernaut but also an entire generation of Baby Boomers whose consumption-based culture has implicated them in the environmental fallout. She argues that it's her generation left to do the cleaning up that is now leading the fight back.