It’s officially spring break, which meant the last week for me has primarily consisted of sitting at my desk where I read and type furiously until my eyes are tearing up and my fingers are sore. It also means I could only blog when procrastinating and that the next few days should be a chance to write some longer posts that I’ve been sitting on. In the mean time, here’s what I’ve been finding around the web this week:
- The man who came up with the Broken Windows Theory died this week.
- Great piece by You Go Girl on a bus.
- If you like graffiti writers moving beyond text and generally pushing graffiti’s boundaries, make sure to check out this video of Askew.
- Todd James has a new print out at Pictures on Walls.
- Great group show coming up in London with Matt Small, MyMo, Sickboy, Fefe, Monica Canilao, Remi, Best Ever and more.
- Stinkfish‘s work is on the cover of Diplomat Magazine this month thanks to Jeannine Saba. Here’s the cover.
- David de la Mano did a fantastic job brightening up this spot in Uruguay.
- Interesting article about street art that definitely makes a real difference in the world.
- Plaztik Mag’s latest video features work by Skewville, Roa and Bast and is creepy/awesome.
- The Living Walls Conference has two great announcements this week: 1. They are now a 501(c)(3), aka an official non-profit organization. 2. In addition to the annual conference, there will be 6 “Living Walls Concepts” mini-events throughout the year, starting in March.
- Craig Ward wrote a letter critiquing Banksy’s critique of advertisers. Given: Banksy is one of the world’s best marketers himself. Beyond that, the letter is a bit of a mess and Ward points out that he has worked in advertising himself. Clearly, it’s written from the perspective of someone who has lost his perspective and seems to boil down to “There’s worse stuff in the world, so umm, please leave advertisers alone.” No doubt that there are greater evils in the world than the public advertising that seems to be the primary target of Banksy’s critique of advertising, but that sure as hell doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. Additionally, one of Ward’s points as to why traditional advertising isn’t as bad as Banksy’s advertising is that traditional advertisers pays for the locations they use. With that argument, Ward completely disregards both the negative externalities of massive ad campaigns that occur regardless of how much the advertiser pays (compared to the documented positive externalities of Banksy’s street art) and the illegal nature of many advertising campaigns which do not pay the government for the space that they use. By his standard, hiring an assassin to kill someone might be better than doing it yourself, because at least there’s money involved and somebody is getting paid for their time.
Photo by Ludo
