It’s a Forbidden Friday!

We’ve had to give this Betabot a special designation: F-1. It is the first (and perhaps the last) of a remarkable line of Betabots- The Forbidden. Like all Betabot’s, The Forbidden have a mission to communicate, but the “Eefs” focus on communicating though- and about- fear.

Meet F-1*BETA,

Or as it has been nicknamed by the Lab Techs; the “Betabomb”.

The reason for this nickname becomes clear after review of this video of F-1’s operation.

F-1 was meant to challenge observers hollywoodized ideas of what a bomb is- what it looks like, sounds like, and how it operates- but precisely because of the way it communicates about the fear of terrorist bombings, the F-1, has, regretfully, been determined to only be suitable for a controlled environment and inappropriate for field-testing.

When conceiving this Betabot, it was felt that the fact that an observer could cancel F-1’s one-minute countdown at anytime after they, themselves, had initiated it- would be enough to prevent a possible… over-reaction by an observer. However, after consultation with several special analysts the decision was made to never release F-1*BETA into the Toronto urban environment. Instead, the F-1 will be broken down and salvaged for parts.

If I may use this report to state my personal opinion for a moment, I would like to say that I maintain my faith in the populace of Toronto’s ability to interact with Betabots in a curious, levelheaded way- without panicking or being reduced to quivering victims of a culture of fear-conditioning.

That said, I do recognize that the greatest risk with all of the Betabots is the fact that they use electronics and wires- and are unexpected objects installed within public space. In today’s world, anything matching that profile runs the risk of being misidentified as a bomb. Most Betabots are made with an attempt to diminish that risk, but the F-1, by its very design, strains that risk to the absolute limit of the breaking point- and that is unallowable.

Even accepting this, I would like to reiterate that I still feel strongly that there is room in this world for a really excellent Betabot (or perhaps some other sort of experiment) that comments, criticizes, and challenges contemporary attitudes surrounding risk identification & management- and related issues such as our current obsession with “security theater”- but I’ve come to concede that this Betabot isn’t that experiment.

I wrote about this last Friday, and I thought that was that.
But after watching the interview with him, I got more upset. He is such a perfect stereotype of the sort of arrogant artist (My piece is important, but whatever it is that police do is usually a waste of time. Not at all like us useful-to-society artists.) that gives the rest of us a bad name. And, to make him even less likable, his ideas to back up his fake bomb threat are so weaksauce. Yes, Duchamp putting a urinal in a gallery setting is recontextualization. The mass-produced urinal becomes a “Ready-Made Sculpture”. It gains prestige and importance and it takes on a significance that it didn’t have in its normal context.
But your fake bomb isn’t a “ready-made” and putting a fake bomb in a museum isn’t recontextualization! It’s just contextualization! It’s still a fake bomb! It has all the significance a “real” fake bomb in a museum has! It’s like Duchamp installed his “sculpture” in a men’s room, and then feigned surprise when dudes pissed in it!
“But I put a note on it that said: ‘This is not a urinal’!”
Still, I had second thoughts about this one.
First I wondered;
“Is it honouring him? Am I just adding to his notoriety? He seems to have wanted to build his reputation, what with the bomb threat and contacting the media and all.”
and then I thought;
“Is this bullying? Am I picking on him? This is likely a stressful time for him, I’m sure. What if I push him over the edge?”

Maybe this is building his fame, stretching out his 15 minutes, but what he did has already thrust him in into the public eye- and if you’re going to be an artist in the public eye- then you’ve got to learn to handle the critics. This like a political cartoon. And maybe I am teasing him a bit, but after that super-arrogant interview (It’s worth watching until the end where he suggests that the dislike of his bomb threat might be due to a flaw in the Canadian national character.) I feel fine taking the piss out of him.
If you feel the urge to put it back, he’s on his knees on the side of the OCAD building.

You know,

Looking at this now, I realize that it would have been much better if I had made a second layer to paint the urinal white.
I suppose we all make mistakes.

Here is the last update of the third follow-up!

The anonymous chieftain of an orange box has been torn at. I really like how tearing my posters reveals a third tone, a grey tone. It works especially well in the case of this stencil.
Unrelatedly,

Starting last weekend, police at the University of California at Santa Barbara began receiving reports from around campus of a particularly academic form of graffiti — red spray-painted allusions to the work of the postmodern author Thomas Pynchon, whose 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49 is (in typical fashion) a sprawling admixture of paranoia, counterculture and obscure literary references.

Also,
If you haven’t heard,

Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson has, as he put it to Torontoist in a phone interview earlier today, “seen better days.”
The Integrated Media OCAD student and his final project for his advanced video class are the direct cause––intended or not––for yesterday’s bomb scare at the Royal Ontario Museum, and, a day later, Jonsson is now suspended from OCAD and is wanted for questioning by police.
Inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s readymades pieces (the most famous of which is the urinal-cum-art-piece Fountain), Jonsson wanted to make a piece for his final project about recontextualization: the idea that the context changes the meaning of a piece of art; in this case, something that is “quite clearly not dangerous, but when you put it in a different context the viewer recontextualizes it”: a fake pipe bomb, and fake YouTube videos showing its fake explosion.
Yesterday at about 4 p.m., Jonsson walked into the ROM with the fake bomb inside a bag. Attached to the bomb was a note that read “This is not a bomb.” Jonsson thought that the note meant he wasn’t breaking the law: he had been advised by an OCAD Student Union lawyer before installing the piece, he says, against spreading false news, and told that he should not attempt to deceive people about the bomb’s legitimacy. (That’s why, for instance, one of the descriptions for the videos he later uploaded read: “Fake footage of the fake bombing at the Royal Ontario Museum capturing the fake moment of impact.”) Though Jonsson intended to leave the pipe bomb outside of the bag out in the open in a “noticeable spot,” “almost like a presentation,” he says there were “too many people around,” and he decided to keep the sculpture inside the bag, placing it on the right-hand side of the ROM’s Bloor Street entrance with the declarative note visible on top.
“I went a bit down the street, as soon as I came out of the gathering,” he told us, “and I dialed up the ROM and they asked for an extension and I hadn’t really thought that far, so I typed in some random last name and I ended up reaching some girl at some office at the ROM and I simply told her: ‘Listen there’s no bomb by the entrance to the museum,’ and then I hung up.”
Jonsson went straight from the ROM back to school for 5 p.m. to give his presentation of his final piece, where he “revealed the extent of the project.” People in his class, he says “were really impressed with the extent I went to.” Worried that there was a possibility of legal action, he hadn’t told his professors about the piece until the night it was installed.
When Jonsson got back home, he uploaded the videos he’d recorded earlier that day to YouTube (to an account that featured other videos––like the one of Osama Bin Laden on the roof of the World Trace Center watching as hearts pour out of the building and Bob Dylan’s “The Man In Me” plays––that Jonsson says are “completely unrelated”). Then, he e-mailed the addresses of them to several news organizations.
“I didn’t really expect it go so crazy.”
Nothing happened until about ten that night, when Jonsson starting hearing about the “crazy circus” that the ROM and its surrounding area had been turned into: streets shut down, bomb squad on hand, and an AIDS gala cancelled (which Jonsson says he had no idea about and that he does “feel bad about”). A day later, “the police are looking for me,” he admits (he intends to approach them, and he fears a mischief charge); while OCAD has taken disciplinary action against him as well, suspending him from the school today for non-academic misconduct.

Jonsson gets no sympathy from me. I think he deserves punishment. It may be art, but it was jerky, stupid, and totally inappropriate. Remember, art ≠ good.

Unlike the Ravenna 5 and the mooninites and many of the other bomb “Hoaxes” we’ve seen recently, I think it’s clear that Jonsson had the intent to get a reaction, his hoax was really that- A hoax. He made something that looked as much like a real bomb as he could. He made a call to the ROM. Then he contacted news agencies. He orcastrated a successful hoax.
And unlike the other incidents where the authorities overreacted or reacted inappropriately, in this case they reacted in the only reasonable way- taking it seriously. I would have too, if I was the one who had to make the call. I don’t care that Jonsson added “not” to his bomb threat in an effort to skirt legal repercussions. People don’t normally call in non-events, after all.
Fool.

This week will be a theme week,

All the art will be on bank deposit envelops.

As I said before: “I like the idea of my images getting passed through a machine, going through a system.

I like the idea of someone stuffing my art full of money.
Maybe now my art is finally worth something.”

Also, some more exciting news- Check out the interview Torontoist did with me!

Here is the text from the interview:

April 2, 2007

Tall Poppy Interview: Posterchild

You are more familiar with street artist Posterchild’s work than you realize. Visit his site Blade Diary, and you’ll immediately recognize his posters, stencils and outdoor installations. Like fellow stenciler Banksy once said, “If you have a statue in the city centre you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right. But as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you’ve made your own sculpture.” Posterchild isn’t just putting up drawings on outdoor walls; he’s changing the way we see our public spaces. And now that you know his works are there, you’ll start to see them all over the downtown core.Which will naturally make you want to know more about Posterchild. But anonymity is a time-honoured tradition of street and post graffiti artists. After all, postering is quasi-illegal, and look at all the trouble those Aqua Teen Hunger Force guys got into in Boston. Again, separating the artist from the work forces the viewer to participate in the art—to form his or her own ideas about what the artist is trying to say or what the piece means to him. It’s also ephemeral—a poster may last a day or a year, all the while constantly changing because of wear and tear and more graffiti.

In your artist statement, you write “I gather my materials from the flotsam of the urban environment, process it, and return it to the city.”
I get a lot of my materials from the garbage. I’ve made posters from blue prints, Christmas wrapping paper or other advertising posters that have been thrown out. I flip them around and print on the back.

One reason we’re obsessed with newness and novelty in our culture is because companies are always trying to sell us their culture. Which becomes non-participatory. To take their detritus, flip it around, and do my own thing on it…to become an active participant in the culture and put it in a public space is very satisfying.

Who is Posterchild?
I chose that name for two reasons—one because I was going to do posters. Two, I wanted a name that would be emblematic of the culture. It puts me on the level of a guerrilla advertiser or a church putting on a bake sale. In Kingston, if you’re advertising a church bake sale and you do 1000 posters, you can get a huge fine. [Still] you’re less likely to get in trouble with postering.

Yet big businesses can put up ads wherever they want…
The number of illegal billboards in Toronto is shocking. Those trucks that drive around town, just idling. That is just the most aggressive thing I’ve ever seen. But they have the money to back this up. They buy legitimization.

Which is why it’s important to create art work for public spaces?
The reason why I like to keep doing it is that no matter what theme you’re working with, you’re doing it in a public space, quasi-illegally. And that carries certain messages in the work no matter what the image is. All street art or graffiti is inherently political because you are saying “I don’t think this space should be this way. I think it should be different.”

But there are risks, like the Mooninite thing in Boston in January. And last April, some teenagers in Ravenna, Ohio were arrested for putting up your Super Mario Boxes…they brought out the Hazmat team for that.

One of my fears when I’m out picking garbage is not that people are going to get angry at me for what I’m doing, but what they think I might be doing. I’m a a shadowy guy out at nighttime with a bag full of suspicious, unknown things.

The Mario blocks are a visual touchstone for people of my generation. The idea was to throw a little magic into day-to-day life. We put it up online and people started doing them all overt the world, which was very cool. This was before September 11. In a post-September 11 world, in small town America, this didn’t fly. There were six girls that did it in their hometown and the bomb squad was called in, and bio-terrorism experts were brought in all for these shiny boxes with question marks on them and flowers inside.

They’re always called hoax devices, which is not true. But the language that the [authorities] use implies these “pranksters” put up these “hoax devices.” A hoax what? A hoax bomb, right? It’s crazy. Only Batman villains would make shiny terrorist boxes with question marks on them. It’s such a Joker thing to do. Were they expecting a jack in the box wth sleeping gas to pop out?

Still you had a blinking LED light on your “Doomed Astronaut” installation last February.
I almost didn’t do “The Doomed Astronaut.” And after the Mooninite thing happened, I was kind of glad it was torn down so quickly because I had this nightmare that some one had called a bomb threat in as me, and the police came after me so hard.

I thought that the idea was that we weren’t going to let [the terrorists] affect the way we live, but its been totally the opposite.

Your work features a lot of spacemen. What was the idea behind “The Doomed Astronaut?”
The deal with that one was that it said “air supply” on the front—that’s were the LED was. And you’d think “Oh, he’s gonna be OK.” But then you’d realize that [the air supply] was battery powered and that it was going to run out and the astronaut was probably going to die. I do a lot of dead astronauts.

Why?
Space is the ultimate example of dreaming, of reaching for the stars. It shows the kind of things that are possible at humanity’s best. The death part is that it doesn’t always work.

Today the stencil is of the letter “S”.

“S”, as in, “Silly, “SNAFU”, or “Suspicious device” and “Smithereens”.

from boingboing:
Thanks to the Boston Police bomb squad, this is one traffic counter box that won’t get a chance to kill anyone.

Way to go.

Also from boingboing:

Today’s post is another little circle paper doiley thing.

But I want to talk about the moonites thing. I’ve been getting a fair amount of email about it.

So I’m going to get all longwinded and nerdy for a bit… You may want to skip it if thats not your thing.

Anyway, here is a letter I sent to Wooster about the incident, I’m hoping they will post it so I’ll have a big ol’ soapbox:

Hey,

So I just wanted to weigh in on the recent events in Boston, as they are so similar to the events that occurred with my Mario Blocks Project. (Last April, 5 girls who made Mario Blocks and placed them around Ravenna, their small town in Ohio, found themselves in hot water when the locals panicked at the sight of gold shiny boxes with question marks spraypainted on them. They called in the Bomb Squad and HAZMAT crews.)

I think this event is interesting for several reasons.

For one thing, it seems that things like this are not all that unique. Just last December Bioterrorism “Officials” were called into a small Arizona town to deal with a dumpster that had the unfortunate double-whammy of being covered in metal-head graffiti (AC/DC, IRON MAIDEN, and, significantly, ANTHRAX.) and also being the receptacle for some discarded flour.

The police were “tricked”, and some would claim with good reason, but I don’t think druggies would try to snort flour out of a dumpster just cause someone wrote, “COCAINE” on the outside of it.

That is another interesting thing. In all these cases, the language chosen by the officials and echoed by the media works to subtly implies intent.

The people involved are called pranksters, which implies that they desired this reaction, and were, infact, intending to get a rise out of the authorities. The acts themselves are called Hoaxes. What? A hoax? That’s weird. What kind of hoax would this sort of thing be? Well, a bomb hoax of course. This sort of language implies intent to fool people into thinking that these things are threats and an intent to disrupt on the part of the “Pranksters”, which in turn, justifies the overreaction by the authorities. The authorities really had no choice but to respond the way they did. They have to treat every “Hoax” like the real thing for the sake of public safety.

But of course they don’t. Apparently, the ATHF promotions had been up in 10 cities for 2 to 3 weeks, with the only overblown reaction coming from Boston, and even the Boston promotions had been up for weeks before they were deemed a threat. Mario blocks have gone up in cities, big and small, all over the world- only the authorities in Ravenna decided that they might be bombs.

This case is also interesting because, unlike the Ravenna incident, it is not a group of street artists, but a group of “Guerrilla Advertisers.”

There is less support from the street art camp than in April when the Ravenna 5 were arrested.

The Graffiti Research Lab, famous for pioneering LED installations, was quick to distance themselves from the campaign, and point out that it wasn’t artistic vandalism:

“It’s just more mindless corporate vandalism from a guerilla marketer who got busted. Interference Inc, welcome to the world of being misunderstood, scapegoated, demonized and wanted by the law. Still want to be a graffiti artist?”

As the GRL point out, the same thing could of easily happened to them, or any of us for that matter. It’s not limited to those who make 3D or electronic work either. 2D work can gather unwanted attention too. Remember the bomb stencils in New York that were taken to be markers for future terror attacks? Or the guy who was arrested after making and spreading those “TANG” stickers, which the police interpreted to mean “Terrorist Anarchist Ninja Guys”?

But it is interesting to me that the GRL needed to specify that it is an ad campaign. The context IS needed to know for sure that it’s an AD. One of the great things about street art is that there is no context except the location itself. If I myself came across one of these, I would of thought that it was just a homage to a loved pop culture image- Similar to my Mario Blocks. I wouldn’t have assumed anyone was trying to sell me anything- which is why, I suppose, more and more companies are using “viral” and “guerilla” campaigns.

Like this promotion, alot of the guerilla advertising campaigns that I’ve seen are indistinguishable from regular street art, especially at first glance. You feel kinda tricked and cheated when you find out that they were pushing red bull or some other shit you don’t care about. (Remember the Sony PSP campaign?)

And that part is, to me, the real threat of guerilla advertising. This situation is being pushing further along with all the attention it’s getting, and as these cases become better known, people may start to assume that any unexplained or unusual images or text (OBEY?) they encounter on the street is just another ad being shoved in their faces, invading their space- so instead of pausing to consider it, and maybe be moved, they will block it out like traditional advertising.

I think that street art is in real danger of losing it’s ability to shake people from the mundane, of losing that magic spark, the potential you get when you put an image on the street.

As ads and street art become more and more married, it’s street art that is going to lose out in the marriage. The advertising world has been co-opting the graffiti aesthetic and culture for years, and while I have the greatest respect for graffiti and it can’t be denied that graffiti is still going strong, it also can’t be denied that it doesn’t have the same “Technicolor Explosion” impact it once did. Graffiti, for many average, non-graffiti heads, blends into the urban wallpaper, as unnoticed as the ads.

There’s another interesting thing here- a generation gap. In both cases, anyone in the right milieu would have recognized the imagery, but the officials apparently didn’t- to them they were “Unknown Objects” and so, could have been bombs.

But then of course, a “Known Object” could just as easily be a bomb, but people don’t freak out over old shoes over power wires and normal garbage and boxes left around. Or at least, not quite as much. I suppose it would be exhausting.)

I don’t know, I may be rambling now. I just wanted to share some thoughts, get them off my chest.

I hope you read it and maybe post it on your site. I’d like to hear
what the rest of the community thinks of this.

I want to finish out by pasting in a response to a question asked on my message board, but feel free to skip reading that, I just think it’s related:

I have a question regarding stencilling culture and the whole idea of “public spaces”. I would like to understand the perspective of the culture with a view to my thoughts regarding the interest driving this movement…

I’ll try and answer your questions, but these are big issues and it’s hard not to go off on tangents..

And also keep in mind that it’s just my opinions. I don’t speak for all of “stencilling culture” street art, or writers.

I was watching a programme about Shepard Fairy regarding his rise to popularity and the DIY push behind Andre the Giant and the OBEY brand. His stencilling became a brand… that brand has become his bread and butter. In turn, his stencilling then became advertising… is this a paradox tainting the whole idea behind this culture?

It’s a conflict in the “culture”, one that I think fuels some very interesting work, but it isn’t “a paradox tainting the whole idea behind this culture”

Firstly, I’m not even sure what “The whole Idea” is. Street artists make their work for many different reasons. Since your talking about Shepard Fairy, Lets talk about his “whole idea”

He claims that the OBEY/GIANT campaign is an experiment in Phenomenology. He says he wants to make people question the campaign and their relationship with their environment. Since you are questioning the campaign, I’d say he’s successful at least half his goals.

At what point does street art become the money producing advertising that is viewed upon as unfortunate at the very least by this movement?

I suppose, at the point where is made/designed/intended to sell or promote something. At the point it “Produces money”.

Of course, all art could be said to be a promotion for the artist that made it. Except anonymous free art. Not all street art falls into that category. Mine no longer does.

And the line is getting very actively blended. Never mind that advertisers and designers have been plastering graffiti inspired text and style on anything designed to be sold to youth for years and years, There are now many examples of advertisers paying to have “Street art” campaigns made. The OBEY/GIANT campaign did not go unnoticed by the big companies. Sony is a famous example.

To me this is the biggest threat to the vitality of street art today. As Shepard Fairy says, street art has the power to stimulate curiosity; it can shake people from their expectations and cause them to “question their relationship with their environment.”

If it becomes more common for big companies to have “Street Art” campaigns, I worry that people will no longer pause to wonder about the intriguing image they encounter on the street because they will assume that it is “just some ad”.

Not just that, but if street art becomes associated with guerrilla advertising, we will lose a lot of support. One of the few things that street art has going for it is that people see it as something of a “Voice for the Voiceless”. This generates some sympathy. That sympathy will disappear when the perpetrator is thought to be aggressive companies pushing even further into our lives.

Also, I worry that the end result will be closing/licensing of even more of our public spaces. Shutting out street artists.

How long until our government starts selling ad space on our sidewalks, in an effort to control the illegal sidewalk ads and generate revenue that will help maintain the sidewalks? It makes sense financially, and that is the logic that runs the world, isn’t it?

In McDonalds, when you order your McFlurry, they make it and serve it with a plastic spoon that won’t biodegrade for years and years. This is because they have done the math and have found that it is cheaper for them to MAKE a spoon and throw it out, than to WASH one. It’s an insane process that is mirrored a thousand times all over the world and it only makes sense financially, so of course we do it.

Advertisers win, street artist lose out. We just can’t compete with the money and power and manpower of the ads.

Why is advertising viewed as a negative force?

For the above reasons.

They have an effective monopoly on our visual landscapes.

Is there something wrong with companies using influence to make money… don’t those companies hire every day people who need to make a living providing services?

Of course not. And yes, advertising is a profitable sector that surely helps our economy. (And art is an unprofitable venture for 99% of all would-be artists. Big art contributes to the economy, but there is no support for the bottom of the pyramid because there is no money there.)

But money isn’t everything. It is extremely important in keeping us feed, providing the quality of lifestyle that we’d like, but art does something else for us, and it’s also important.

For what it’s worth, I am not “Anti-Advertising”. I think there are some very clever and interesting ads. Ads ARE art. Some are very good art.

I never said I was anti advertising. I’m not an “Ad Buster” or “Culture Jammer” My art doesn’t exist in opposition to ads. If ads somehow disappeared tomorrow, I would still be out there doing my thing.

It’s just that ads are ONLY made to sell something. That is there one and ONLY goal. To build a brand and make money. Our public visual spaces could and SHOULD be SO MUCH MORE than that.

Enough of being constantly sold things deadens ones sprit! Make you feel like little more than a target. A wallet with needs.

Another thought… if we are all renters of this so-called “public space”, wouldn’t the main idea of sharing a publicly rented space be to keep every one content with its appearance?

Sure, and if you think of citizens as renters, then the local government act as landlords- and that’s just what they try and do. They try very hard, in fact.

But of course there are problems. You might as well ask “If we are all on the earth together, shouldn’t we all just focus on getting along?”

Here is the problem with the system as I see it:

As far as the city goes, we can all agree that we want to “keep every one content with its appearance.”

But people have different ideas as to what looks good. The solution? Committees are formed to decide what looks good. The result? Typically, when committees or groups are in charge of making aesthetic choices, the choice made is the most bland, inoffensive option. It’s impossible to please everyone, so instead people try to offend the least amount of people possible, especially when it comes to public space.

The result, as far as graffiti is concerned?

Policies that create an awful lot of dull grey walls.

Not because all graffiti is ugly,

Not even because all graffiti is a crime,

(Which it is, in most places. This is a fact- it isn’t up to debate. The law says it’s a crime, then it’s criminal. The Art or Crime debate is an unhelpful one. Graffiti is most often both at once. Actually, Graffiti has to be Illegal by definition. A legal mural- no matter in how much of graffiti style it is rendered in, is a mural, not graffiti.

But, of course, criminal doesn’t equal immoral necessarily. Homosexuality, Divorce, and alcohol have all been illegal in my society before- but they’re not now.)

It’s because all Graffiti is a risk- all graffiti might piss people off.

Returning to the landlord analogy-

A lot of (in my experience- most) landlords won’t let you paint your walls- or, if you do paint, you have to paint it white before you go. Not because the next person will love white, nobody really loves white, it’s because the next person is guaranteed not to be pissed of by white walls.

Any other colour might piss them off. The landlord doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to risk it.

It’s not about what is good; it’s not even really about keeping people content. It’s about keeping people not angry.

Want evidence? Look at all the Plop art around. Sure, It’s not good, but it’s not bad enough to piss most people off. It gets the commissions.

Or on the other side, Check out the laws regarding your homes appearance. Ask Mr. Dergiuin. Some places won’t even let you hang your laundry out to dry or paint your garage door certain colours.

So, we, as a society at least have a working solution, right?

We could never agree on what colour the living room should be, so we keep it white. We get a bland print to match the couch.

No one is happy, but no one is upset.

But then a company wants to advertise. They have some money to throw around- enough to change minds. They ask around and a few landowners decide to take them up on the offer. The billboards, signs, and ads that wrap across the whole sides of buildings go up.

It’s an important source of income for the person who is renting the ad space, and if they want to do it, they have the right.

Again, here is the problem.

Our public visual landscapes are not shaped by the people who inhabit them- but by those who can afford them.

Want to see the results? Go for a walk down on the “valuable” spaces. The “landlords” do a great job of keeping the graffiti out, but welcome in the advertisers and their dollars.

This, to me, is a problem.

It’s hollows and cheapens our culture. Deadens us as a people.

And because, perhaps most insidiously, it forms subtle and dangerous associations.

Ads become associated with Wealth and prosperity (Why do you think people pay good money to wear ads across their chests? Its not just the brands association with money/affluence- it’s also like saying: this is valuable space, I’m a part of the valuable culture.)

On the other side, graffiti becomes associated with crime, poverty, rebellion, and a loss of control. Broken window theory. (But it sells great to disenfranchised youth who want to buy a new identity at the mall.)

The popular media works hard to reinforce these associations.

There is a another paradox here. The idea behind this street art culture “dictates” (I use that term loosely) that we should enjoy the space of the world around us… everyone should be able to express themselves. But if I too am renting this space, don’t I also have the right to see a space free of images that are unpleasant and/or undesirable to me as a sharer of the space? I wish this could be addressed in some way that can enlighten me regarding the issues from the view of the practicers.

I think I already talked about this. I am not advocating an anarchistic world were everyone draws on the walls, nor am I presenting a solution to the “White Walls are the Lowest Common denominator” problem.

-But I’m not at all satisfied with the current system of handing over control to those who pay the most for it.

-And I feel justified to practice my art in a responsible, intelligent manner. I always said that it is the responsibility of street artists to behave in a mature manner if they want to be treated as more than criminals.

But to sum it up, I think it’s fair to say it’s a big conflict in street art.

Graffiti is another story, I think.

Graffiti is in some ways more honest about it all. Writers admit to claiming space illegally. Bombing. Destroying walls.

Which makes sense to me, because I feel that Graf has it’s roots in ads.

Graffiti was invented by kids without formal art or art history training. What was the art they saw, day in and day out? ADS.

So what did art form did they invent? ONE BASED ON ADVERTISING.

(I’m sure someone else must of said it before me, but I’ve been unable to find anyone else drawing the same conclusion. To me it seems very obvious that graffiti began as a sort of “Folk Advertising” or “Outsider Ads”.)

Graffiti is all about getting up, getting famous, getting known.

Well, now I’m getting in tons of other issues….

Time to wrap this up…

Feel free to write back, disagree, whatever. I enjoy talking about this stuff.