on job-creating street art

In this year in which the president of the United States of America is once again appointed to his post by representatives who are themselves selected (not elected) by the individual States and sent off to the all-powerful electoral college, much is being said in public about Things That Create Jobs, and about Job-Creating Agencies, Legislation, Institutions, and Policies. Amid all of this hullabaloo, it is not surprising to this author that one major job-producing aspect of American culture has been left out, namely: Street Art.

Street art creates jobs in different ways. First of all, graffiti writers frequently purchase large quantities of name badges, shipping labels, poster-board, poster sheets, glue, and other such materials which they use as media for storing their art, for moving it around without too much fuss or unnecessary weight, and for applying their art to otherwise unadorned surfaces – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Then, our favorite urban vandals buy markers, pens, chalk, ink, spray-cans filled with paint, colored pencils, regular pencils, cans of paint both acrylic and oil-based, and many other media with which they make marks upon the aforementioned paper products or deface public (and private) property directly – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. Beyond this, Self-Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) purchase face-masks, respirators, eye-protectors, and many other such materials required to shield their soft tissues from fumes and splatter caused by their many writing implements – if not for street artists, the persons making these products would likely be unemployed. (I would like to point out the major flaw in the argument I am making here: that the enormous, intricately-linked nature of our capitalist world markets means that the action of a few, specific individuals does not necessarily create jobs for any other specific individuals, even if the two parties Seem To Be Directly Linked; it is therefore impossible to attribute the Creation of Jobs to any one specific action (such as buying a packet of colored markers), person (such as Banksy), or group of persons (such as all American graffiti-writers put together), but the same can be said for the bullshit seeping from the mouths of our corrupted and re-election-obsessed politicians who claim that this specific thing or that specific policy Created Jobs.) Thirdly, graffiti writers create jobs by giving judges a means to punish juvenile delinquents and other such petty criminals by scrawling on and otherwise defacing property that needs to be subsequently scrubbed clean of said defacement, rehabilitated, and re-painted – if not for street artists, the persons making the cleaning products needed in said rehabilitation, and the persons catching, trying, and sentencing these law-breakers, would likely be out of work.

The above text is brief, but, I believe, powerful, justification for officially recognizing self-directed urban beautification as essential to a robust economy and a vibrant and lively national consciousness. So please, dear friends, write to your local street artist, and thank her for getting Americans back to work.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on graffiti in Philly & LA

(or, a whorphan's take on the street art scenes of two fine American cities)

At first glance, street art in Los Angeles has much in common with that in Philadelphia. In each city, the graffiti is vibrant, irreverent, daringly-placed, socially-critical, and to be found in most neighborhoods regardless of their social status or overall character. Certain designs by well-established artists appear in both cities, proving that the SDUBS (self directed urban beautification specialist) likes to travel, that he knows not to change a cunning or successful design, and that his art is relevant in any asphalt-landscape, or phaltscape. As in LA, it is nearly impossible to see anyone in Philadelphia actually applying street art – as this is done generally at night or during periods of inclement weather – a fact which points to the wily and suspicious nature of the street artist as well as to his desire to stay anonymous and to attract as little attention to himself, and as much to his work, as is possible. In both cities, SDUBS utilize such self-adhesive mailing labels as are available free-of-charge at branches of the United States Post Office; I found it far more daunting a task, however, to find such stickers on the East Coast than it is out West, where they seem to abound. In Philadelphia, I noticed a greater number of pieces stuck up by apparently classically-trained artists seeking perhaps to spread the word about their abilities by going rogue; in Los Angeles, the street art that survives not only the rigorously brutal meritocratic evaluation process as done by the street artists themselves but also removal or destruction by the city's own Artwork Desecration Teams tends to be of a more gritty and distorted nature than some of the abstract – even gallery-worthy – pieces as are found in Philly.

In LA, street art is removed or painted over continuously – sometimes daily – whereas in Philadelphia, pieces can stay up for months, even years (see the dusty, weather-beaten FRESH sticker on the rear of a ONE-WAY sign on the north side of Arch Street, near the Troubadour). This can have a stagnating effect on the street art scene, with the best spots dominated by the more aggressive, tenacious, or merely lucky SDUBS, while in Southern California the best spots are constantly painted over by roving bands of the city's own counter-vandals, people who seem to hate beauty, creativity, and any artistic expression other than that found in for-profit art galleries. The riot of different styles and slogans and symbols found in LA trumps the scene found in Philly, which, upon closer inspection, appears to be dominated by a mere handful of artists who nonetheless pursue their Happiness with youth-like vigor and obvious zeal. Furthermore, I noticed in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection a tendency toward cute designs with anime-style eyes and slightly distorted bodies; in Los Angeles, any and every imaginable style, color-palette, medium, and subject-matter is on display, twenty-four hours a day, in miles of street-side, no-cost-to-the-consumer art galleries.

In all, however, I must applaud Philadelphia's street artists for pursuing their Happiness with fortitude and vigor, for affixing their pieces to unconventional and hard-to-reach spots, for working tirelessly to enliven the phaltscape with bright and flashing colors, and for spending their own time and their own money on the materials needed to beautify their drab and conformist surroundings. That a city a fraction of the size of such a sprawling and surface-filled metropolis as that western behemoth can produce and maintain such a lively and compelling street art scene bodes well for the town that birthed our Independence. Mahalo, friends, and aloha.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on plantago lanceolata and street art

  The ribwort plantain, or plantago lanceolata, is a healing plant. When consumed as a tea, it opens the airways and clears up congestion while cleansing the kidneys in a soothing manner. When applied to an external wound, its antiseptic qualities will speed up the healing process and reduce the chance of scarring. For these reasons and for many more, plantago lanceolata has been used as a healing plant since before the dawn of civilization. In caves inhabited by early homo sapiens, we find remnants of ribwort right next to remnants of ocher, and of iron oxide, and of other materials used to make pigments.

  We might deduce what ancient homo sapiens did with the plantain, but did he do with pigments? He used them to beautify his environment. He drew with them upon his favorite rocks and trees, and he covered the walls of difficult to reach underground caverns with detailed pictures of his daily life in a process that would today be called graffiti, or street art.

  We have established that in graffiti lie the roots of humankind's artistic passion, and that street art is the wellspring of its genius. But, you ask, how else does this ancient practice resemble the healing plantain? Both appear as if overnight in underused and neglected places such as empty lots and abandoned buildings, where they thrive and spread. Great bunches of healing plantago are mowed down and landfilled weekly, their healing powers ignored, whereas great patches of street art are torn down and painted over daily, their chaotic beauty lost forever. Both benefit all who take of them, for they give of themselves freely and without ado, yet neither requires attention or maintenance, since each can damn well take care of itself. Both can cure the ills that plague humankind, with ribwort attending to the body's needs, and graffiti exciting the soul. So enmeshed are these two with one another, so vital are they to the vitality of our species, that they will be with us always, or at least until the last woman breathes the last breath.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

on the magical nature of street art | encyclopediamericanifesto

  There is mysterious work afoot in major cities across America – the work of street artists! Search modern urban architecture's unadorned spaces, and you will find gallery upon gallery of cunningly executed and deftly placed works of art. Look in the forgotten and the underutilized areas so common to today's city, and you will discover a riot of forever changing and seemingly self-rejuvenating works all crammed and pasted and plastered over each other. And if you watch over a few weeks time the canvas of urban art shift and change you will begin to wonder who are the persons who put up these strange and colorful pictures, and how ponderous are their cojones.

  It shall remain a mystery what exactly drives the individual to risk his life simply to showcase his artistic abilities; the street artist keeps from sight – only twice in the last two months have I seen street artists at work, and both times were at night. We may never explain why a person starts suddenly to affix his artwork to previously unadorned public surfaces, just as we may never explain why state and local governments hate street art as much as they do, or why they work so hard to cover it up and remove it. (I suspect that governments make street art illegal so that they can incarcerate gang members for spray painting, although these official bodies have in effect criminalized all public artwork other than that found on billboards or on other tax-revenue-generating places, which makes little sense from an artistic standpoint but complete sense from a capitalistic standpoint.)

  The self-directed urban beautification specialist, or SDUBS, works for neither fame nor money – she operates because she knows it is more important for her to pursue her Happiness freely and without restriction than for all the buildings to look the same. She executes her craft with the sole intention of making the urban environment more beautiful, and she can hardly stand to see a blank space go unfilled. Her city and state will punish her for her efforts, not rewared her. They look upon her as if she were vile and incorrigible scum, yet she has already forgiven them both, because her heart is pure, and devoid of malice.

  場黑麥ioanni elymucampus fecit

p.s. go to urbanartuploads.blogspot.com or to urbanartuploads.tumblr.com to see pictures of street art

American heritage desecrated in Los Angeles

  Westwood, which sits in a shallow ravine beside the 405 freeway, resembled not long ago any other college town in America. But today, those of her denizens early at their business – the bums looting in trash cans, the kids heading to class, and the professionals out for coffee – these otherwise unrelated individuals gaped commonly in horror to find their little slice of phaltscape stripped nearly bare of street art.

  What draconian tactics the foes of undirected urban beautification are, and with what speed they move! Not five days ago, Westwood was where people came to marvel and to rejoice at the riot of stickers and posters and graffiti that adorned the empty and the forgotten spaces, where they flocked to gather images to upload to their weblogs, where they rested to gaze at the pictures of free art captured inside their pocket-sized computers. But now, with their town whitewashed nearly beyond recognition, native Westwoodians wander around as if betrayed, while outsiders hurry along shooting about themselves with strange and mournful glances.

  Layers of priceless street art were simply scraped off and discarded. Cunningly executed and deftly applied pieces of unique artwork done by world renowned artists were sprayed over and defaced. From the burning of the library at Baghdad to the fire that raged in L.A.'s Central Library, seldom has the artistic effluence of mankind been so brazenly and so effectively destroyed as in this current action. Imagine if a wing of your favorite museum burnt to the ground, and the pain you would feel; such is the pain that lovers of street art now feel. Picture someone stabbing at your favorite painting and prying it from place with a long metal scraper, and the anguish that would fill you; similarly filled are admirers of this all too fleeting form of artistic expression.

  Not only is the product of thousands of man hours of artistic effort gone from all but memory, but the cruel effort of the courageous and selfless street artist is at this time being dumped into a pit somewhere outside the town of Calabasas. The self-motivated urban beautification specialist never rests, however – she will be at it again, making her rounds and pursuing her Happiness with vigor and daring. As her pen forever flicks so her art forever sticks.

  場黑麥 ioanni elymucampus fecit

(pictures of some of the lost street art are at urbanartuploads.tumblr.com or at urbanartuploads.blogspot.com)

p.s. street art found painted over and and similarly desecrated at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue – this may be a larger effort than I had imagined

encylopediamericanifesto - phaltworthiness

  The street art vagabond has sworn to preserve for Posterity the diversity of graffiti – it is her duty to capture, isolate, and upload photographs of any urban artwork she locates by bicycling or walking or skating around a city. Looking, however, does not always slake her thirst: in order to perpetuate the phenomenon of artwork that seems to appear suddenly on previously unadorned urban surfaces, and to prove her passage through the area, she leaves her unique mark, a hand-drawn image that serves as her Glyph of Personal Identification, her own meager tribute to the maddeningly prolific beautification campaign known as street art (or, alternately, as vandalism).

  The urban artist spends resources such as time and money on his efforts to fill the urban environment's many empty spaces with colorful and bizarre pictures; for his troubles he is hounded by police and harassed by them likewise. In addition to such acts of state-mandated repression, he suffers from repeated and chronic bouts of a newly classified condition known as phaltweariness (the individual suffering from this condition will commit frequent acts of frugality and self-sacrifice; his actions will reek of virtuous behavior, which he will act not out of a desire to prove himself to another person, or to claim for himself glory, but because the majesty of the human spirit has rewarded his sacrifice of time and self by filling him with a transcendent vigor not seen since the dawn of humankind).

  No grasp as fleeting as that of Big Brother might contain, however, the inexorable and all-nullifying tempest that is Virtuous Action. The street art vagabond therefore who hurls without ado the bounty of her artistic labor upon the phaltscape's expectant canvasses while showcasing freely upon w³  her fellow street artists' work (where it shall be judged and ignored until all servers crash at once), she who does these things simply because they need doing, she who refuses to claim ownership over any part of the process, that street artist is phaltworthy – she acts for the good of the world by leaving well enough alone.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on phaltweariness - the automobile

  Today's city streets are pitted and rough as if mauled by large and powerful beasts, and the souls of the people who drive upon are similarly abused. Aggression and impatience descend without fail upon the poor buggers who drive upon today's maligned avenues.

  We the Smog Riders of the America Phaltscape (the asphalt landscape) look often with pity upon our neighbors of the road, they who spend long hours strapped tightly to chairs which are in turn bolted to the floors of a tiny metal boxes. After spending years in such torturous environments, they will have forgotten the satisfaction of moving their own bodies through space/time using nothing other than living muscle and some metal tubes bolted to a pair of pneumatic tires. Rather than the good sweat that stands upon the skin of the bicyclist after a healthy cross-town slog, the sweat of the car driver will be distressed and foul, an oozing sheen that tends to creep through his furrowed brow as he worries about the skyrocketing price of petroleum.

  The smog riding street-art vagabond knows as well to avoid paying for petrol as she does to remain always vigilant of the withering and debilitating affects of phaltweariness – it is her duty to preserve the chaotic super-abundance of Street Art, and to record for Posterity as much of it as she can. To fulfill this task, and to keep her feet on the pedals, she has learned the limits of her body's tolerance for dehydration, pain, and exhaustion, and she knows how to make herself well again.

  Given the phaltweariness, the stressed out drivers, and the miles spend cycling through the phaltscape, how does the vagabond capture every unique work of street art that is at risk of being torn down as soon as it goes up? She does not. But she does what she can do, photographing what pictures might cross her path with the road grit foulding her mouth and a song filling her heart.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

encyclopediamericanifesto entry - phaltweariness

  Phaltweariness is a state of fatigue caused by bicycling for many kilometers on sun-baked city streets. The phaltweary person is known to go to bed easily, to sleep well through the night, and to exhibit a healthy and flexible physique. People suffering from PW (the peedubs, the phaltweariness) will experience aching muscles, 1000 yard stares, and prolonged periods of wild-eyed, fundamental indifference.

  While any avid bicyclist will occasionally encounter PW, phaltweariness affects the street art vagabond in particular, that isolated individual who prowls the Earth's cities on foot or on bicycle taking pictures of street art and uploading those pictures to the available data networks. Although the forces of homogeneity and societal control look upon him with blatant mistrust, the street art vagabond labors to perpetuate and to preserve for posterity as digital photographs the beautiful diversity of posters, stickers, paintings, and other graffiti that constitute the global Street Art movement.

  Spes Mea In Ratio Est – 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

laurel of godlike achievement

  The founders of America were influenced primarily by two religions: Christianity and Hellenistic polytheism (see here). Our halls of government are festooned with plaques referencing the Christian texts (see here); let those same halls ring with praises for the people of this land who most readily display the virtues of those gods whose spirit filled the minds of Thomas Jefferson and his ilk.
  In the Christian tradition, achievements made by non-Christians are often ignored, swept under by the praises sung to individuals who have sacrificed solely for the cause of that religion, individuals who labored for what is considered, according that religion, positive change. The ancient Greeks, however, were not so partial to positivity – indeed, they preferred waiting to see how the chips would fall to the judging of actions based solely on how they helped to expand the scope of a particular religion.
  In the ancient Greek world, men who in battle displayed the guile, the strategic mind, the cunning, of goddess Athena were said to be the embodiment of that god, to be filled with her spirit. Great fashion designers were hailed as exhibiting the virtues of Arachne, the goddess of the seamstress, while skilled orators were said to be filled with the essence of Hermes, the god of public speaking.

  I hereby propose the creation of a group to determine, via a thorough and national vetting process, those Americans who in our times are most filled with the spirit of the Greek gods that so vastly influenced the founders of this nation.
  Great generals will receive the Laurel of the Owl and Shield for displaying heroic endeavor and cunning battle strategy, characteristics of goddess Athena.
  Great poets and authors will receive the Laurel of the Arrow and Lyre for displaying the poetry and truthfulness attributed to god Apollo.
  Great diplomats and merchants will receive the Laurel of the Winged Boot for exhibiting the diplomacy and cunning wiles attributed to god Hermes.
  Great societal disruptors and street artists will receive the Laurel of Helm and Spear for their civil disorder and manly courage, attributes they share with god Ares.

  Many other gods exist in the Olympian pantheon, and many more Laurels will be issued. The awards will be distributed in recognition of achievements that in any significant way affect the course of the nation, be they the actions of a spray-painting mad genius or the destruction of a Taliban outpost by special forces operatives dodging bullets in the torn landscape of Helmland province.

  The concept of the Laurel of Godlike American Achievement will celebrate people from all castes, all groups, all races, and all religions. It will allow the people to select from within their midst those individuals who exhibit the virtues we hold most dear, such as inventiveness, risk-taking, motherhood, and skateboarding where skateboarding is prohibited. It will whip the masses into a great churning froth of Happiness by giving them something to which to aspire, such as knowledge of the woodland arts (Artemis), metalworking and sculpture (Hephaestus), and the celebration of eternal youth (Dionysus), aspirations other than those based purely on the accumulation of capital or on the ability to repeat the same religious mantras for years on end.
  Your suggestions are welcome. Your readership is appreciated. Your hope springs eternal.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp