Graffiti: The movie
Posted on July 5th, 2008
I am a crotchety old man about graffiti. 99.9% of them — and, as usual, all my statistics have been authenticated by having been made up — impose an adolescent narcissism. But I also think: (a) I don’t really understand the cultural positioning behind it, (b) some of it is public, rebellious art, and (c) it’s not like the commercial exploitation of public space is so great.
So, the documentary Bomb-It looks very interesting. (The initial trailer is meatier than the new one.) (Thanks to RageBoy for the link, for this follow-up, and for posting the beautiful poster.)
There’s a nice little short story that I think might provide a useful insight into taggers’ motivations. It certainly resonated for me.
Check out “Two Dreams On Trains” by Elizabeth Bear.
you can read it here
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050103/dreams-f.shtml
i think you just might dig street art seen through the lens of wooster collective.
check them out.
I’ve always thought that there is some type of barrier either in my station or DNA that prevents me from being able to read 90% of graffiti. I just can’t make out what its saying… I suppose I’m not the target market there. My name is Bud and I’m from Texas..
There’s some truly beautiful street art (graffiti rebranded, including stickers & stencils) photographed on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/stickertraders/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/wwwflickrcomgroupsstencil/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/49503134345@N01/
http://www.flickr.com/groups/331357@N24/
And there’s a particular European graffiti artist, named Bonom, who has done some amazing work:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/bonom/
I think there’s some interesting overlap between street art and free culture concepts — but, much like a lot of the free/open user-generated content online, a lot of graffiti is probably only interesting to the person or small community which created it.
Even the simplest things, though, may have universal appeal; one of my most popular photos is of an English-language stencil seen on a wall in St. Petersburg, Russia last summer:
http://flickr.com/photos/jdfalk/719776795/
But I think one of the best graffitied quotes I’ve come across was part of a mural in Vancouver:
http://flickr.com/photos/jdfalk/2089561949/
there’s a great old documentary called “Style Wars” that covers this beautifully