About / Contact

illustration of David by M.-C. Demers

contact: David Widgington: widge [@] burningbillboard.org

Burning Billboard is a Mobile Journalism (MoJo) project I started in autumn 2008. It is a contemplation of contemporary issues and events that linger in the margins of the media. I’m particularly interested in issues of media, independent journalism, comics, social justice, among other things.

The project began when I realized that I didn’t know much about Southern Sudan and decided to visit the region to acquire first-hand information and share it with others. My first visit was from February to April 2009 and I hope to return.

I posted reports, videos and audio interviews here during my first visit and have continued to do so, although I now have a dedicated blog for Southern Sudan information: South Sudan Info. Now he no longer has to self-censor Burning Billboard’s content without diluting the Southern Sudan information.

What came before Burning Billboard?

As I approached ten years of independent publishing as Cumulus Press publisher in 2008, the lure of video intensified. I revisited my five years as founding member of Montréal-based Les Lucioles video activist collective (2002-2007), aware that the time had come to recycle the printed page into moving pictures. So at Cumulus’ tenth anniversary party, I stood up onto a chair and announced to everyone present that I would publish no more books and that the party was actually a wake to celebrate a decade-old publishing house whose life had just ended. “Documentary film and video reporting,” I revealed, “will be my next foray in independent expression.”

What’s in a name?

BurningBillboard is the transition’s incarnation and this blog is its expression. As the name stipulates, there is nothing to sell. In fact, I deplore the mercantile prominence of the world around me where public spaces of expression are reserved primarly for commercial purposes. For financial profit. Public discourse is no longer appreciated in the urban landscape and little or no space is available for people to post their ideas, concerns, notices; except online.

The information presented on Burning Billboard weaves audio interviews, video footage and written articles into personal reports that reflects my attempts at understanding the complexities of the world as I meander through it. Some topics are initiated locally or regionally, while others find their source across the country and around the world.

The name comes from this patch I bought at Expozine (Montréal’s annual small press, comics and zine fair) a few years back that captivated my objections to advertizement pollution. I don’t know who the artist is but I’d like to give thanks, in absentia, for capturing the sense of rage that comes from the over-exposure of commercial messages that is an acute affliction in cities these days. Montréal is no exception with its particularly virulent growth in the numbers of illuminated billboard trucks driving throughout the city, polluting our air and trying to sell us things we don,t want!

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