Portrait by (I think) Thierry Ehrmann at the Abode of Chaos. Photo by Thierry Ehrmann.
There’s been surprisingly little street art or graffiti about Edward Snowden, the patriot who leaked information to the press about the NSA’s massive internet spying programs. I would think that street artists would jump at the chance to make art in solidarity with Snowden, but so far that hasn’t been the case. The two pieces here by Thierry Ehrmann aren’t even on the street in the sense of being placed in truly public view, they are in his outdoor museum Abode of Chaos. I also found work by PosterBoy, Bamn and Eclair Acuda Bandersnatch. There was also this projection in Berlin, but I guess I’m looking more specifically for street artists who are taking up the cause.
PosterBoy. Photo by PosterBoy.Eclair Acuda Bandersnatch. Photo by Steve Rhodes.Bamn. Photo by Jamie NYC.Portrait by (I think) Thierry Ehrmann at the Abode of Chaos. Photo by Thierry Ehrmann.
This is what I’ve been able to find so far. If you know of more Snowden-related street art or graffiti, please let me know in the comments section of this post.
Update: Although Rom, the owner of StreetArtNews, has contacted Vandalog and denied his role as ‘manager’, claiming only to be ‘good friends’ with DALeast, this seems unlikely in light of his role in the mural. According to Jimmy C himself, Rom was actually onsite when Jimmy approached DALeast at the wall. When DALeast apologised, he told Jimmy C that he (gesturing to Rom) had organised the wall. Rom then offered his own apologies to Jimmy C, adding that he could get him ‘any wall in the world’ from L.A. to Miami in compensate for the mishap. Sounds like a manager to me, or at least business partner. – PD
The professionalisation of street art is nothing new, so why do some career artists still conceal their commercial strategies behind their anarchist personas? Because it’s cool, right?
Let’s have a look at DALeast‘s recent excursion to London that saw 7 new walls culminate in his first solo exhibition in the British capital. One of those walls went over Jimmy C‘s portrait of Usain Bolt without any consultation. Maybe you’d say, ‘So what? It’s an ephemeral art form, get used to it’. Maybe, but the fact that DALeast went to the trouble to get permission from the building’s owner whilst disregarding Jimmy C does say something about his priorities. What’s more interesting is DALeast’s own excuse.
When Jimmy C found DALeast painting over his mural, the newcomer shrugged an apology down from the scissor lift and explained that his ‘manager’ had organised the wall for him. When RJ in a recent interview with DALeast asked ‘what makes you want to paint a particular wall or not’ the artist simply replied, ‘fate’ which sounds so much cooler than ‘my manager picks my walls for me’. It’s easy to see why DALeast would avoid that part of the picture but it does makes you wonder what a professional street artist really is.
As it turns out, DALeast’s manager is none other than the owner of the popular blog StreetArtNews(edit) the ‘manager’ DALeast was referring to seems to have been Rom from StreetArtNews, who while not technically DALeast’s manager did help to organize some of DALeast’s walls in London and worked with him on the contest/gallery show project he did there. StreetArtNews regularly features DALeast’s work whilst neglecting to mention any conflict of interest. I guess it must be handy to have a manager(edit) business partner who runs a trusted publicity platform but, for those of us who view street art as a DIY counterculture, we’d better get used to questioning where our ‘news’ comes from.
Traditionally, the journey from vandal to professional starts with the artist’s first commissioned piece which leads to bigger and bigger murals and ends with a show for Jeffery Deitch and a line of sneakers. You’d think that this career trajectory might have become boring by now, and let’s hope that it has, but old market strategies will always be replaced by fresh ones that find new ways to feed the bottomless appetite for adolescent rebellion.
With a new spin on an old cliché, artists assume the pose of ‘fuck the system’ until their audience wise up to the contradictory and masturbatory claims of an industry that apparently aims to fuck itself. Moving on, the informed audience is quickly replaced by the next crop of pubescent rebels, all too eager to buy the OBEY cap, adopt Brooklyn slang and congratulate themselves for being authentic.
For anyone that believes street art can be more than the lucrative exploitation of teen angst, it’s important to call bullshit whenever it appears. Put simply, be a capitalist, or, be an anarchist, just don’t tell us you’re both.
Earlier this year at FAT Lab‘s show at Eyebeam in New York, bad ass motherfucker Evan Roth had an installation called Ideas Worth Spreading. Basically, the installation is a mock stage setup for a TED conference, the popular conference with the tagline “Ideas worth spreading.” Getting to give a TED talk is considered a pretty high honor in some circles, but naturally not very many people get to give them. Roth’s Ideas Worth Spreading gave anyone who stopped by Eyebeam the opportunity to at least appear like they had given a TED talk. Naturally, lots of people pretended to give TED talks, took photos, and shared them on social networks, getting plenty of kudos from their friends in the process.
Roth recently posted an update about Ideas Worth Spreadingon his blog. As it turns out, a few of the photos were reposted and shared enough that a Google Images search for “ted talk” brings up some of the Ideas Worth Spreading photos in the results. As you can see below, there’s even one Ideas Worth Spreading pic within the first 10 images of the “ted talk” search (it’s the one at the top of this post).
You may be asking, “Isn’t this Vandalog? What the hell does this project and some Google Image search results have to do with street art?” Hear me out. This is what my upcoming ebook Viral Art is largely about. In Viral Art, I argue that this project falls into a category that I call active viral art, and that street art is also active viral art. Basically, active viral art is art that is imposed upon an unsuspecting audience. That’s what street art is on the street, right? Artist decides to put up work in a public space for an unsuspecting audience, bypassing any art-world gatekeepers in the process. Well, now that we spend so much time in front of screens and online, the internet is a kind of new public space. What Roth has done here is put up his work in this new public space for an unsuspecting audience. In this particular case, I guess the street art equivalent would be a subtle ad disruption.
Am I crazy or am I on to something? Let me know what you think in the comments. I can’t wait to more of my thoughts on active (and passive) viral art later this year when the Viral Art ebook is released (for free of course).
Nychos is in Detroit at the moment and he’s making the most of the trip. First, there’s his solo show opening this Friday evening at Inner State Gallery. I’d Like To Meat You! opens on Friday, runs through July 18th, and sounds like it will feature lots of his trademark dissection works on paper, canvas and wood. And today 1xRun released their latest print by Nychos. Longtime Nychos fans will recognize the rabbit in the print as a dissected version of the Rabbit Eye Movement throw-up. The print is almost sold out though. There’s just 7 left out of 100 as I write this. If that print isn’t to your liking or it sells out too quickly, Nychos is currently in the midst of an Indiegogo fundraising campaign to get some money to make a documentary film and there are some great prizes (including prints) for that. Finally, Nychos and Persue just finished the above mural in Detroit.
On a related note, I really want to get out to Detroit sometime soon… So much interesting stuff going on out there.
Honestly, when I see a time lapse video of street art or graffiti, I usually watch about half of it and then skip to the end to see the finished piece. I often then discover that the filmmaker has neglected to include the finished piece at all which is kind of upsetting, and when the finished piece is included, I’d still rather see a photo. Time lapses can be great, but the usually go on for too long. We get it. You use spray paint. What does the end product look like?
Well, this video of Sofles is a time lapse of sorts but it completely blew me away. I don’t think I missed a single frame of the nearly 4-minute piece except to blink. It’s extremely difficult to capture graffiti as the performance that it is, but this video comes close. It may not really capture the performance of graffiti in the purest sense, but it does turn the act of Sofles painting into a performance of sorts. Such an amazing piece. I’ve seen things a bit like this before, but never anything at this level of complexity. Kudos to Ironlak, Sofles and filmmaker Selina Miles for keeping me watching a time lapse video of painting for about 20x longer than I normally would.
I’m super excited today to talk about this print that NoseGo is doing with 1xRun. The good folks at 1xRun asked me for a few ideas of who I thought would be a good fit for them, and NoseGo immediately came to mind. And then, I saw this painting (Tall Tales) posted on NoseGo’s Instagram and thought “God, I hope whatever he does for 1xRun is as good as this.” I don’t usually love NoseGo’s pieces that include dinosaurs, but I do love Tall Tales (okay, I guess the Loch Ness Monster isn’t a dinosaur but you get my point). I especially like the little TV character. Tall Tales is an all-around strong image from a young artist whose work I’ve really fallen in love with over the last year or so. NoseGo says the painting “is based on ideas of folklore and story telling between generations.”
The print version of Tall Tales will be available starting today at 1xRun for $50. The print is an edition of 50 and measures 14 x 18 inches.
While I was in London recently, I had the opportunity to tour the murals in Dulwich thanks to Remi/Rough. Dulwich is a part of South London, almost suburbia really, where you definitely wouldn’t expect to see world class murals, but a fair few have popped up recently. Most of the murals in Dulwich are thanks to the recent Baroque The Streets festival, where artists were invited to paint murals based on paintings in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. We already posted about Reka’s piece for the festival, so here are a few more pieces I found in this quite part of London. By far my favorite has to be the piece by Nunca, but there are a lot of strong pieces. Thanks again to Remi/Rough for showing me around town.
Conor Harrington. Photo by RJ Rushmore.Phlegm. Photo by RJ Rushmore.
Another massive month in Melbourne in April with some great events, shows and work on the streets. This month I’ve also decided to include a bit more on graff and also some work off the streets in some of Melbourne’s awesome abandos.
Melbourne Train Graff. Photo by Luke McManus.
There’s been an explosion of panels running in Melbourne recently, including a couple of whole cars. Whilst some of the pieces are not the best in quality it’s still rad to see so much graff on trains again lately. Are the authorities asleep? Or is it our lack of trains to meet demand to blame so they HAVE to run them? The best of Melbourne graffiti Facebook page is a good place to keep up with what’s running, they cover anything running each day on the Melbourne rail network (good and bad). Here’s my favourite flick from the page for April. Continue reading “Melbourne Monthly Madness – April 2013”
If there weren’t pictures to go along with this story, I’m not sure I’d believe it. But there are pictures, and here’s the story of what was probably the first graffiti production in Alaska. I hope you enjoy this anecdote from PMER/CATELLOVISION as much as I have… – RJ
Back in 1995 Myself, REVS & FUEL drove up to Alaska just for the mission of going. When we got to Fairbanks, the place was corrupt, full of drugs, boarded businesses, hookers, depression… it was great. It was July so we had 24 hours of daylight.
We saw this wall in the center of the city and asked the owner for permission. He told us we had to ask the Chief of police because he was in charge of beautifying the community. So we meet Chief Woolley and he gives us a thumbs up and tells us how to paint, what he wants to see: Alaskan pioneers, animals, mountains, all that good stuff. We agreed and got to work…
By the time we were done it was 4am… We had the sun on one side, the moon on the other. We looked at the wall, looked at eachother and said… Let’s get the fuck out of here!!!
We painted a pipeline that started with a shiesty character holding a fist full of money, the pipeline going down the wall, finally opening up with oil spelling our names. We threw in a bloody cross that said “Valdez” and gave him a mountain.
Two days later we found that we were wanted and on the cover of the newspaper for being a “Fast talking band of NYC graffiti artists that duped the Chief….”
