Poland dundalk heaven

[above] mural graffiti street art found 2017 in Baltimore, Maryland, that depicts these decipherable alphanumerics: Poland dundalk heaven
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 26 Sep 2018

I miss street tacos,

Friendly smiles, empty surf-breaks. Viva Mexico!

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

haiku 21 Feb 2018

Where’s the graffiti -
The posters and stickers in
Free, street-galleries?

[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]

hot and glorious

I caught an earlier train into New York than expected, arriving around one pm Sunday afternoon. The city greeted me with a hot and glorious day, three hours of which I spent walking from 32nd and 7th avenue down through the Bowery to Houston street via Broadway and Union Square, then back up to Penn Station on 7th avenue starting at roughly 14th street.

Some remnants of street art had survived the mass cullings executed by the city of New York, but places where formerly many beautiful pieces could be found were instead art-free dead zones replete with franchise coffee shops. Union Square lay bare, stripped of all but one speck of its cultural heritage. Except for a few spots, Broadway along most of its length had been picked clean, scraped-up lighting poles and remnants of sticker-glue the only reminders that works of art had once existed there.

By the time I hit Mamoun’s falafel near Washington square park to photograph the stickers posted on its walls, I was so badly dehydrated that my vision was starting to lag and I was having trouble keeping my balance on two feet. Mine was a forced march to harvest as much street art as possible, you see, and I could not be bothered to drink more than enough water to let my vital organs barely function. I still managed to photograph hundreds of pieces of street art - mostly in the East Village and the Bowery - but was dismayed at the lengths to which the city had gone to desecrate and destroy the graffiti that has for so long made it a beacon of hope in a land of sterilized conformity.

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

on gathering graffiti - bicycling in dangerous neighborhoods edition

Among the most dangerous places I’ve ever visited while searching for street art have been in Baltimore, Maryland. There are few other cities in the world compared to Baltimore where things go from fancy to fucked-up as quickly, first super safe then scared shitless from one block to the next. For anyone whose hobby includes combing city streets on a bicycle in search of stickers glued to and posters pasted up in dirty and dangerous places, here are three simple tips on how to stay alive and well whilst gathering graff.

1. Make eye contact with people, and greet them. Do this always, especially in dark and lonely places. Many gangsters operate on the basis of honor, and looking them in the eye and saying hello to them is an honorable act that rarely fails to calm situations. (Don’t expect them to say hello back, however; not getting shanked or shot at should be validation enough.) Greeting people lets them know that you know they’re there; it shows them that you respect their presence and are not afraid of them or anyone they may be with. If you bicycle around a corner and surprise a group of people, raising a hand in greeting (with two fingers making a V, for victory) and saying a kind word should ease tensions and allay fears.

2. KMA - Keep moving, always. Don’t linger, loiter, stay on one block without moving for too long, or appear lost. If this means backtracking a block or two until you can shoot across a road or bicycling up on the sidewalk to avoid a traffic snarl, do it (just go slowly around pedestrians). If you see some graffiti and want to stop to take a picture of it, check that the picture is well centered and not blurry, then keep moving. The entire process should take fewer than 30 seconds, rarely enough time for someone to approach or harass you.

3. Make a fool of yourself. Bicycle no-handed, pull wheelies, whistle or shout loudly, and generally look like you’re having a grand olde time. White dudes on bicycles wearing helmets and burning lights fore and aft are usually the police. But the police usually don’t pull tricks, and they’re definitely not out to have a good time. Nearly every potentially sticky encounter I’ve had of late was defused by me letting go of the handlebars and lazily cruising by whoever looked like they wanted to hurt me (while giving them a last-minute nod and V, of course).

There are few better ways to hunt street art than on a bicycle. By following the three simple rules mentioned above, you’ll hopefully stay safe and gather graff for many years to come. Mahaloalowa!

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

today in BKK

Soaring towers all around, my feet are weary of the ground that punished them all morning long, the tuktuk drivers – how they thronged – enticing me to take a ride while just today the PM cried when high court rulings sent her sprawling, these mean streets may yet see brawling. I know not the creed or god of any pro-regime death squad that roams about this sweaty place, that waves its flags and yellow kerchief, here the mood is thick with mischief. Roadside stands serve the best food although the seating can be crude, broken stools and shaky tables but the cooks are quick and able, serving up thick beef-broth stew that dribbles down and stains my shoe. Bright possessions dot my room, my heart is clear of dross and gloom, for I now learn to love myself, which trumps dollar, yen, bhat – all wealth. A German maiden helped me hope, encouraged me back up the slope which I had slipped and skidded down, soon vagabond reclaims the crown that he'd abandoned long ago, with ruddiness his cheeks now glow. In Lombok she rejected me, her friendship now is all I see, but that is something I will cherish until such time as I shall perish, liberate of life's blood, face-down in cold and frozen mud. There is a blister on my toe, my pace it will not ever slow, for I shall wander, taking stock, of this great city, olde Bangkok. Maddening, her headlong pace, who shelters millions in her bosom, what a fierce but gentle race that sprawls from Bearing west to Chit Lom.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥

on anti-graffiti

Cities go to great lengths to try and thwart the application of street art. They send out minions to paint over graffiti and scrape it away, apply materials that keep stickers from sticking, raise street signs and utility boxes higher to make them harder to reach, and cake on a cottage-cheese-like layer that diminishes a pole's available surface area. Not one of these measures keeps the graffito from pursuing his trade; rather, they force the SDUBS (self directed urban beautification specialist) to seek out new surfaces upon which to make his art, higher and less accessible areas to cover with paper or paint, new and craftier ways to make a name for himself in the riotous and anarchic meritocracy that is graffiti. We hope that someday the leadership councils of these cities will choose to promote and support the dazzling and intricate arrays of free artwork that the graffito spends his time and money creating and risks his life and liberty applying rather than them wasting limited resources on destroying beauty and making the asphalt landscape visually uniform. A barren phaltscape compels people to go home, draw a picture on a piece of paper, and tape or glue their creation to a neighborhood tree, pole, post, box, booth, or sign. Graffiti is among the oldest forms of human artistic expression we know of; for tens of thousands of years, mankind has been free to alter his surroundings, and there is indication he will be stopping anytime soon. Street art is here to stay and it will not be forced away so gather pen and pad and brush and get you outside – hurry, rush!

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

graffiti, a meritocracy

Design an image, crafting it lovingly from the aether. Make it appealing to look at, and fill it will subtle meaning. Then, after much gentle and loving effort, venture out into the night and glue it to a pole, abandoning it there. This is the life of the street artist. Once his picture is up and his work is done, he vanishes into the darkness to wait and see how the Universe will respond. As a seasoned veteran of the streets, he operates cunningly and without ado; occasionally, however, he struggles with memories of earlier agony. Oh how he would sweat when first starting out, and quiver, his knees shaking on the way to check and see if his image were still up or if it had been scraped down or covered over in the few hours since it was born. Oh how he would wallow in sadness at finding his tender little piece plastered over with another person's art, or, worse, hacked off and discarded by a member of one of those Artwork Desecration Teams. The budding street artist suffers trepidation because his graffiti – once it is stuck up or otherwise applied – stops belonging to just one person and becomes the common property of anyone who might look at it; it merges with the harsh and tumultuous meritocracy that is graffiti.

If the graffiti artist wants to keep his sanity, he will realize quickly (by delving deeply into his soul-space and maintaining a proper equilibrium there) that his street art, along with the graffiti applied by the next vandal, is just one segment in a giant, shifting mosaic applied by hundreds of selfless SDUBS (Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists) whose goal is to enliven the otherwise colorless and visually barren asphalt landscape (phaltscape). With enough experience he will understand that by covering only a portion of his piece instead of defacing it entirely, the other street artists deem his art edgy, unique, or beautiful enough to merit a continuing existence on wall, pole, and street-sign. (Exceptions to this rule include if his work is so terribly lame as to be worth neither time nor effort to cover over or if he is particularly good at putting his pieces in places few others might reach, which in itself would prove his mettle.) As long as he stays in the graffiti game, he shall, in time, develop a vandal's eye of his own, which will allow him to judge which pieces to cover over, which to incorporate into his newest work of art, and which to not touch at all.

His is a dangerous game of applying and fleeing, watching and forgetting, shrugging and re-applying. His is a world in which his city destroys his art nearly as quickly as he can apply it, a world in which his work must stand not only the test of time but also appeal to the sensibilities of any subsequent vandal whose primarily purpose is to destroy the phaltscape. He must keep one eye out for meddlesome and ever-watchful cops while contending with some of the finest artists operating today for display space, artists who plaster over poor and inferior works of art mercilessly and without hesitation. Such is life in the harsh meritocracy of the graffiti-writer.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

as dogs do

I am walking down a street behind a woman and her dog. The beast stops in the middle of the sidewalk to urinate. I step accidentally in the stream of piss spreading toward the gutter, but instead of reacting angrily, I think: The poor brute had to piss somewhere – why not right here in front of me? If the bitch had been curbed, I would not have stepped in its bowel movement, but since it was not, I must shake its piss from my shoe.

Animals eat and drink; they digest and must relieve themselves; they piss and shit when their bowels get full. As a member of the species homo sapiens as well as a bowel-moving, food-digesting animal, I shall, if necessary, make water into any nearby gutter or storm drain. (My trick is to stand behind a vehicle that is tall enough to hide my junk, pull out a cellphone, fake a call, and pee into the gutter while pretending to be engrossed in conversation.) In Amsterdam, the city provides public toilets; in Berlin, peeing into the gutter is a common practice; but he will be rudely awakened who tries to empty his bowels into the street in New York, Chicago, or San Francisco.

City-dwellers of America, let us end species-based discrimination by curbing ourselves and pissing in the street. This nation's draconian and Puritanical societal norms put us at risk of injury and death – they hinder our very pursuit of Happiness. Celebrate your animal nature by watering the asphalt landscape (phaltscape) with a golden shower. Empty the bladder to free the soul.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

eyes in graffiti

Walk through Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Berlin, Amsterdam, or Bangkok, and look in the forgotten, in the grimy, and in the underused places. With a keen glance and a bit of luck, you will witness the riotous beauty known as graffiti. Oh, what a profusion it is of style and color, of shape and size, of message and image, all blending into a whole that, if viewed from afar, resembles little more than clutter. Step closer, however, and trust your peripheral vision, and your most tender of sphincters will drink gladly of the intoxicating power of street art. Why, though, do we look? Why are we powerless against the urge to sweep our gazes down into worn and sticky curbs and up onto soot-stained poles? Eyes, my friends, we look at graffiti because it is full of eyes (and not just any eyes, but human eyes). They may have stumbled upon the technique accidentally, they may have copied it from advertisers, but, for whatever reason, graffitos exploit one of mankind's primal and deep-seated fears, using a time-proven method for getting people to look at something – giving it eyes.

Since our time as forest-creeping, prairie-running, skull-bashing troglodytes, the species homo sapiens has developed the uncanny ability to recognize the shape of the eye even if it should be obscured by layers of random patterns. Experts argue whether this ability is restricted merely to recognizing human eyes or if it applies to those of our former predators (i.e. bear, cougar, coyote), but I hazard that our subconscious brains are constantly trying to figuring out if someone, or something, is looking at us. Advertisers exploit this evolutionary adaptation to our status as Top Predator Of One Another by blanketing the asphalt landscape – the phaltscape – with pictures of pretty people who nearly all happened to have been staring directly at the camera's shutter when it opened. (Now, however, instead of our powers giving us the upper hand in a fight-or-flight situation, they allow us to be convinced that we need that new and re-formulated cucumber body scrub. Woe be unto mankind.)

All quasi-scientific, pseudo-evolutionary nonsense aside, why do graffiti-writers use eyes in their designs? Why does they want people to look at their works of art? Few graffitos apply their craft for financial gain; as with other labors of love, people cipher-write regardless of the risks it poses to life, limb, liberty, and liability. SDUBS (Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists) are wily and suspicious by nature; they maintain a level of honor, decorum, and discipline so profound as to make inquiry into their personal matters a life-threatening endeavor; therefore, these questions shall likely go unanswered for generations to come. For now, however, please enjoy the street-side galleries of free-to-the-consumer art wherever you may be, and rest easily in the knowledge that, by looking back at eyes that look at you, you are merely executing a deeply-ingrained survival reflex that is as natural to humans as is laughter. Never forget, however, to keep an eye out for mankind's oldest enemy – itself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on harrowed rats

While paging through a dictionary one day last year, I came across something called a ruptured duck. (Now, I cannot locate this entry in my New Oxford American dictionary, and, without access to Lord Googlebot, I cannot do an Internet search. Help!?!) If memory serves correctly, the ruptured duck is an Old World heraldic symbol consisting of a detached human arm – bent at the elbow – embossed upon a shield with square top corners and a rounded bottom. I remember reading the description of the ruptured duck and finding therein few answers to pressing questions.

A few of my questions were as follow. 'Who chose the name for this emblem?' 'Is there an emblem of a whole duck, before its rupture?' 'Is the ruptured duck a secret image designed to enrage the simple-minded or is it merely a bit of medieval nonsense that somehow survived the ravages of time?' These questions well never be answered, but my initial puzzlement inspired me to start designing a coat armor, or coat of arms, for the modern street artist, graffito, and vandal. So far, there are two (similar) designs, found here and here. The goal is to develop a coat armor simple enough to recreate in less than sixty seconds that depicts both the tools of the graffiti trade and the graffito himself.

The rat represents street artists because they frequents hidden and scary places, bringing life to the ignored, the dirty, and the underutilized portions of their respective cities. And even though they tend to be interesting and productive people, graffitos are reviled by nearly everyone else, by cops and property owners, magistrates and fence builders, security guards and taxi drivers. Besides other graffiti writers and buxom female teenagers, the only persons who tend to applaud a vandal's work are ones who sell paint. The anarchy symbol seen in both pictures represents a common attitude held by Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists, or SDUBS: no one person owns the world, it belongs to us all; therefore, we will make the drab spaces beautiful by risking life, limb, and liberty in order to paste, spray, draw, and bomb our art into and onto the boldest possible spots. My design skills are paltry, and my ideas want for much, but perhaps if I keep bashing my head against the wall for long enough, something useful might come out of it.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

on stalking art

Oh the many miles this whorphan walked Saturday through Philadelphia. It is a good thing he wore his new leather work boots – they needed breaking in and to make his skin's acquaintance. His wanderings were neither useless nor wanton; he managed to photograph nearly ten dozen examples of street art, or graffiti, which he can now process, preserve, curate, and display.

In some cities, graffiti inhabits certain areas more frequently than others; persons seeking it can simply show up at the popular spots and gather to their hearts' content without much craning or swiveling of the head. In Philadelphia, however, street art must be stalked and searched for, culled from the backs of tall signposts and canvassed from the sides of news kiosks, utility boxes, and telephone poles. In fact, the author found entire blocks denuded of beauty, small rectangular patches of dirty glue on the backs of otherwise unused spaces such as parking-meter poles and transformer boxes the only remaining evidence of hundreds of works of art. But if the fruitful labor of the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialist (SDUBS) were easy to find, and if his strange and colorful images required less effort and patience to obtain, the wonderful phenomenon that is street art would be as mysterious as an unadorned dumpster and as appealing as the sound of mating swine.

In the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection, one must tease beauty from the forgotten and the under-utilized places and ignore the suspicious glances of the uninitiated as one applies one's own paltry contributions with deft slight of hand. This author thanks the disparate street artists of Philadelphia for re-applying their art as soon as the city has paid to have it destroyed. Keep fighting the good fight, you tenacious SDUBS, and mahalo.

mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥

on graffitos' patroness

For all of their differences in style of clothing, method of address, performance under fire, gait while walking, and ability to tolerate bullshit, street artists share one thing in common: a life-long love for the dandelion (and for kicking off their white, fluffy, puff-ball-like heads). As an individual who spends his time altering the appearance of things that everyone else seems to be ignoring, the graffiti-writer will – should the opportunity present itself – run wildly into a field of dandelions just to decapitate as many of them as he can, as quickly as possible. The dandelion requires just this sort of action to deliver her seeds to the Shifting Winds of Fortune; she gains of the graffito's destructive tendencies; thus, she is his goddess, his flower-patroness.

Beyond the symbiotic interdependency of dandelion with graffito, the two also share other traits, albeit ones perhaps less obvious to the casual observer. Both are loathed by the population in general, the flower for its tendency to grow nearly anywhere regardless of efforts to keep it out, the artist for his tendency to access most any imaginable surface – regardless of perimeter fencing, guard, closed-circuit television camera, or watchdog. Both are loved by a small but growing group that keeps its opinions to itself and enjoys beauty wherever beauty should arise. Dandelions grow in neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (gutters, trash heaps, empty lots) where little else can gain foothold; street art is applied to neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (alleyways, abandoned buildings, concrete highway embankments) where few people venture. Cities hire squads of individuals, outfit them with brushes and paint-buckets, and send them out to paint over great patches of well-executed works of art, thus providing the graffito with fresh canvas upon which to erect new works and encouraging him to pursue his Happiness upon surfaces always harder and as a rule more dangerous to reach. Cities treat the dandelion similarly: it is sprayed with poison, assaulted with shovels, dug under the soil, weeded, treated, and burned, all to little avail - a cheerful and resilient little blossom, it will re-appear during the next growing season in larger numbers and with deeper and more tenacious roots.

It is as hard to catch a vandal in the act of applying his craft as it is to catch a dandelion in the act of colonizing new terrain. Both street art and dandelions improve the human condition freely and without ado, bringing beauty to the world without seeking thanks or a by-your-leave. Street art covers and enlivens surfaces that just a day before had been blank concrete walls, and dandelions appear just as suddenly, shining yellow faces enlivening lawns that just a day before had been mono-cultured swaths of grass devoid of Nature's abundance. We, the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) of America, ask the inhabitants of Terra to search for beauty in all places, to pursue Happiness with us by blanketing the urban and the natural environments with bright and vibrant colors, to rejoice in the sudden appearance of beauty in places forgotten and forlorn, and to remember to honor our common goddess, the dandelion, by kicking as many of her puff-balls as we possible can. Stay on your toes out there, dear friend, and may you be filled always with divine breath.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on naming conventions

Every state in America's South has destroyed the concept that “All men are created equal” by adding to its state constitution portions of the Christian bible's old testament. Proving themselves wholly ignorant of the fact that none of the persons who founded this American Republic saw fit to restrict the rights of free-thinking Americans of legal age who happen to be homosexuals to enter into contractual agreements with other free-thinking Americans of legal age who happen to be homosexuals, tens of millions of freedom-hating voters in Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virgina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky decided to embed the hateful opinions of their god Jehovah, or YHWH, into their states' constitutions (for an example of these dastardly and cruel opinions, read Leviticus 20, specifically verse 13). Instead of actually coming out of their hate-closets and confessing their disdain for the notion that democracy can flourish amongst the peoples of the earth only when church is kept separate from state, these misguided voters casually forgot to mention which religious text they drew upon when drafting their laws, laws that ended hundreds of years of equality amongst the various peoples of America.

In keeping with this new tradition of doing crazy things without calling them crazy things and actually getting away with it, we Lovers of Liberty shall no longer refer to smoking weed as smoking weed, but as grimble-dinks (or something similar), and our spraying of graffiti and applying of street-art will henceforth be called huddel-fugg (or something similar). Since neither grimble-dinks nor huddel-fugg have been classified as crimes by any judge known to mankind, we shall do them to our hearts' content and without even the slightest effort to hide these our preferred methods for Pursuing our Happiness as we see best fit.

The accused war-criminal former President George Walker Bush authorized the use of torture by referring to it as “enhanced interrogation techniques,”and the accused war-criminal President Barack Hussein Obama continues to violate the right of individuals not to be transported across vast distances in order to be imprisoned without trial or access to legal counsel by referring to it as “renditioning.” By committing these crimes against humanity, our highest officers have proven to mankind that we Americans are but loathsome jackasses who long ago sacrificed our sacred Honor by violating a half-dozen national and international laws in order to end the lives of persons merely suspected of having done us harm (see the slaying of the Saudi Arabian citizen known as Usama bin Laden and the killing of the American citizen known as Anwar al-Awliki). These our accused war-criminal Presidents have shown us Lovers of Liberty a way, however, of doing whatever we please without fear of punishment, retribution, or the application of clearly-worded federal, state, local, national, and international laws and statutes – we have but to do what we wish to do when we decide is best to do it and to ignore the cries and condemnation of any and all persons who demand that we stop. Unlike our accused war-criminal presidents, however, we just want to Pursue our Happiness in accordance with the Declaration of Independence and the XIV Amendment to the Constitution when, where, and how we as individuals decide is best; we shall continue to respect the Liberty of others even as we are imprisoned and abused by the various layers of American government for living lives full of Liberty and devoid of harm to other persons. What a fucking crock of bullshit we have allowed this country to become. Hrm, though, and mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on street art in NYC

I am yesterday come direct from New York City (NYC), that fair, Mid-Atlantic island-metropolis. Being a purveyor of street art, and a person who collects images of these most fleeting slivers of mankind's dazzlingly bountiful imagination, posting them occasionally at urbanartuploads.blogspot.com, it is my rote to explore a city's avoided and trash-strewn places, taking pictures of any graffiti I find living there. Having collected street art in Berlin, Los Angeles, Amsteram, Philadelphia, Long Beach, San Diego, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Tampa, Boston, and, most recently, in New York, I have amassed an internal sense-knowledge-base of the many different and various trends, techniques, and habits that graffiti writers tend to exhibit; ergo, I believe I can gain a rapid understanding of a city's predominant trends-in-vandalism from seeing but a small portion of the overall milieu.

Perhaps I was in the wrong areas (Hunter's Point, Long Island City, and Manhattan), or perhaps I was on the wrong streets (primarily down Broadway from 42nd to Battery Park, and near the World Trade Center), but most images (except for those examples that will be uploaded to urbanartuploads.tumblr.com in about three months, due to backlog) that I managed to capture were obtained from only a handful of areas around town, including near Canal Street, on the Lower East Side, and in the East and West Villages; the rest of Manhattan was either swept clean of its no-charge-to-the-consumer open-air-art-galleries or the police forces of certain areas are so adept at patrolling and desecrating the works of art that street artists labor to apply there that these clever vandals know well enough to stay away.

Compared, moreover, to the cities mentioned above, Manhattan's street artists seem to prefer primarily self-adhesive name badges sold by one of the major office-supply chain stores, upon which they write – in nearly illegible, seemingly gang-or-crew-specific script – their own names, identifying numbers, or the name of the group or home area. (Such stickers were seen primarily in parts of NYC with little to no other graffiti, as opposed to graffiti-rich areas, which exhibited such profusion of street art that the aforementioned stickers became all but invisible against the colorful and riotous backdrop of other works). Whereas in, say, Los Angeles, one finds curious and strange examples of graffiti adorning otherwise-blank surfaces in nearly every part of the city, whether in the financial district, in the heart of Hollywood, or in the sleepier parts of Koreatown, graffiti in New York tends to be applied to almost any available surface – adorned or blank, private or public – that happens to be in arm's reach of the sidewalk. Whereas in most other cities graffiti-writers generally apply their works of art to the backs of street-signs, to public utility-boxes, or to hatches and those metal doors that cover access panels – mostly avoiding stuccoed or painted surfaces – in NYC, vandals appear to not give a fuck about what they spray over with their pressurized paints, which pisses off the city's property owners.

Persons looking for high-quality street art in New York City will do well to avoid the shiny and the well-swept areas, preferring rather the grimier and less-well-kept areas, which will exhibit such bountiful and beautiful examples of graffiti as one might expect from a world-class city such as the Big Apple. Just remember to stoop slow, to revel in the filth, and to keep your head on a swivel, because the NYPD is alert, and it is everywhere.

場黑麥 mentiri manufactorem fecit

on street art's blooming goddess

For all of their differences in style, method, appearance, gait, and habit, street artists share one thing in common: A life-long love for dandelions (or, more specifically, for kicking off their white, fluffy, puff-ball-like heads). As individuals who spend their time defacing and destroying things that everyone else seems to be ignoring, graffiti-writers will – should the opportunity present itself – run wildly into a field of dandelions solely to decapitate as many of them as they can in as short an amount of time as possible. The dandelion requires just this sort of action to spread her seeds upon the Shifting Winds of Fortune, and because she gains benefit of the graffito's destructive tendencies, she is his goddess, his flower-patroness.

Beyond the symbiotic interdependency of dandelion with street artist, the two also share other traits, albeit ones perhaps less obvious to the casual observer. Both are loathed by the population in general, the flower for its tendency to grow nearly anywhere regardless of efforts to keep it out, the art for its tendency to appear on most any imaginable surface regardless of perimeter fencing, guards, closed-circuit television cameras, or watchdogs. Both are loved by a shrinking, silent minority that keeps its opinions to itself in an effort to enjoy beauty wherever beauty should arise. Dandelions grow in neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (gutters, trash heaps, empty lots) where little else can gain foothold; street art appears in neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (alleyways, abandoned buildings, concrete highway embankments) where few persons would normally venture. Cities hire squads of individuals, outfitting them with brushes and buckets and sending them out to paint over great patches of well-executed works of art, thus providing the graffito with fresh canvas upon which to erect his new works, and encouraging him to pursue his Happiness in places hard or dangerous to reach; similarly, the dandelion – which is sprayed with poison, dug out of the soil, dug into the soil, weeded, treated, and burned, all to little avail – itself being a cheerful little blossom, is more than likely to re-appear during the next growing season in greater numbers than before and with deeper and more tenacious roots. It is just as hard to catch a vandal in the act of applying his craft as it is to catch a dandelion in the act of colonizing new terrain, whereas street art and dandelions improve the human condition freely and without ado, laying beauty at mankind's feet without seeking thanks or asking so much as a by-your-leave. And, perhaps finally, street art appears as if by magic, covering and enlivening large surfaces that just the day before had been blank, imposing concrete walls; and dandelions appear if by magic, their shining yellow faces covering and enlivening lawns that just the day before had been mono-cultured, sterile swaths of grass denuded of any traces of natural abundance.

We, the SDUBS* of America, would like to remind the inhabitants of this land to search for beauty in places it is rarely thought to inhabit, to pioneer ways to improve the urban and the natural environments (especially by blanketing each with bright and vibrant colors), to rejoice in the sudden – almost magical – appearance of beauty in places forgotten and forlorn, and to remember to honor Goddess Dandelion by kicking as many of her puffy balls as you possible can. Stay on your toes out there, dear friends, and may you be filled, always, with divine breath.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

(* self-directed urban beautification specialists)

on the use of eyes in street art

(reasons, questions, and motives)

Stroll through downtown Los Angeles, up New York's Broadway, or along the avenues of Philadelphia's Center City, and look in the forgotten, in the grimy, and in the underused places. With a keen glance and a bit of luck, you will witness the riotous beauty known as street art. Oh, what a profusion of style and color, of shape and size, of message and image, all blending into a whole that, if viewed from afar, resembles little more than visual clutter; but get in good and close, and follow the guidance of your peripheral vision, and your most tender of sphincters will drink invariably of the intoxicating power of street art.

But why do we look? Why are we powerless against the urge to sweep our gazes into worn and sticky places and up onto soot-covered utility poles? Eyes, my friends, we look at graffiti because it is full of eyes (and not just any type of eyes, but human eyes). Perhaps they stumbled upon the technique accidentally, perhaps they copied it from advertisers, or maybe they just plain Knew to tap into one of mankind's most primal and deep-seated fears, but, however it occurred, street artists employ one of the most basic methods for getting people to look at something – to give it eyes.

Since our time as forest-creeping, prairie-running, skull-bashing troglodytes, the species homo sapiens has developed the uncanny ability to recognize the shape of the eye even if it should be obscured by layers of seemingly random patterns. While experts may argue whether this ability is restricted merely to recognizing the human eye, or if it applies to the eyes of all of our former predators (think bear, cougar, coyote), few persons dispute the fact that our brains are really good at figuring out if someone, or something, is looking at us. Advertisers exploit this evolutionary adaptation to our status as Top Predator Of One Another by blanketing the phaltscape with pictures of pretty people who nearly all happened to have been staring directly at the camera's shutter when it opened. (Now, however, instead of our powers giving us the upper hand in a fight-or-flight situation, they allow us to be convinced that we need that new and re-formulated cucumber body scrub; woe be unto mankind.)

All quasi-scientific, pseudo-evolutionary nonsense aside (I am not a scientist, nor am I particularly intelligent or well-versed) – why do graffiti-writers use so many eyes in their designs? Why in the name of Beelzebub do they wish for people to look at their works of art, and to what purpose do they make use of our aforementioned ability to pick eyes out of the ether? As the SDUBS (self directed urban beautification specialist) is wily and suspicious by nature, and since she maintains a level of honor, decorum, and discipline so profound as to make inquiry into her personal matters a life-threatening endeavor, these questions shall likely go unanswered for many generations to come. For now, however, please enjoy the street-side galleries of free-to-the-consumer art wherever you may be, and rest easily in the knowledge that, by looking back at eyes that look at you, you are merely executing a deeply-ingrained survival reflex that is as natural to humans as is laughter. Never forget, however, to keep an eye out for your fellow man, he who has been hunting you for longer than you shall likely ever know.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on the SDUBS codex

Street artists have a method, yet they have no known method; they follow a code, yet they follow no known code. There is a rule and a measure to the business of graffiti, a codex of unwritten, non-binding, and unspoken rules that are themselves constantly in flux, and always changing. As it would be foolish to attempt to capture these rules or to try to fix them in ink and in time, and as few who dare write about them live to tell the tale (let alone receive any sort of respect from their peers), let us examine a few of the more apparent entries in the SDUBS codex, or the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialist's rulebook.

To celebrate the glories of socialism, the SDUBS applies her artwork primarily to public property such as street signs, USPS mail boxes, pavement, asphalt, utility poles, subway and light-rail cars, city buses, and to any otherwise unadorned surface located in or on local, state, or federal government buildings. (Graffiti will find its way onto privately-owned property, but if it does, it more than likely belongs on whatever boring and otherwise unadorned surface the vandal decided to deface.) Since she cannot hope to please all persons who might cast eyes upon her labors, the SDUBS works to satisfy her own artistic sensitivities and not those of anyone else. As her work is constantly exposed to external and internal criticism, she allows her natural abilities to flourish ceaselessly, and strives to make her artwork more vibrant, more colorful, less oppressive, more daring, less confusing, and more dastardly than all the rest; it is her goal to criticize those things as she sees wrong with the society in which she lives. Driven by a righteous purity that even she cannot quite explain, she is always on the move seeking out virgin surfaces upon which to display her talents. A creature of deep serenity and pervasive inner calm, she goes about the business of graffiti accompanied only by her own steadfast conviction, never hesitating in the application of her work, never fearful of the potential consequences of her actions, never glancing about to see who might be looking at her; she is a seasoned operator who cares about little but the task at hand. She does not linger near the applied work, nor does she deviate from her course any longer than it might take to stick up her dearly departed piece. And, finally, she experiments with any and every conceivable style of artwork creation and application until she has found the mixture that suits her best: Hereby, she avoids frustration, plays to her greatest strengths, and stagnates neither in style nor in daring.

The author hopes that this brief but poorly-worded and insufficiently-researched list might help the uninitiated to gain a better understanding of street art, of the street artist, and of the goals and aspirations of these strange and wonderful persons. To the night-crawling, alley-lurking, pride-swallowing, risk-taking SDUBS of the world: May your pens not leak, your nozzles never clog, and your hearts stay free of pride and malice. Mahalo, friends, mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on fliers and vandalism

America's cities are waging war against those of their citizens who beautify with graffiti the visually sterile urban environment. Deemed a nuisance and incarcerated frequently on charges of vandalism, today's street artist is treated with revulsion and disdain and badgered incessantly by city councils and police forces alike. These brave and selfless individuals venture forth constantly in their efforts to bring color and joy to the bland and unadorned phaltscape. Yet beyond these fearless individuals, there are others who do much as graffiti artists do, but who act without fear of repercussion or punishment – those people who put up fliers for lost and missing cats or dogs, to offer home cleaning or grooming services, and to guerrilla-advertise goods and services somewhere other than in a penny publication.

The self-advertising city dweller will tape her message to her neighborhood telephone pole with many turns from a roll of clear packaging tape, or she will staple it to her local tree enough times to keep it affixed even in gale-force winds. But unlike the graffiti artist, this city dweller will go about her business in full daylight without being talked to, approached by, or otherwise harassed by John Law. To harness this new and liberating reality, and to prove to the world that they are not ashamed of their actions, SDUBS (self-directed urban beautification specialists) in major metropolitan areas across America are setting up websites that parallel the messages they apply to physical sites in order to justify their beautification efforts as those of self-promotion (should such justification be necessary, which it rarely is, as SDUBS go about their business with cat-like stealth and formidable deliberation).

Beyond the positive effect of making bland cities more colorful, these newest, cross-genre efforts by America's SDUBS increase the number of people visiting their respective cities by showcasing the artwork they have labored so hard to produce, artwork which they apply freely and without demanding recompense. And unlike his self-promoting, guerrilla-advertising, house-cleaning-while-hair-cutting neighbor, the street artist is not trying to sell anything – he wishes only to pursue his Happiness without restriction, and to beautify his drab surroundings in peace.

場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

a g o t

  For a city to destroy and deface all graffiti other than pieces done by Banksy is similar to it removing from its museums all paintings other than those done by Michelangelo, and burning them.


Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp