vandalism or public service?

[rmd]

i am occasionally conflicted about graffiti (or street art or whatever you want to call it). some of it is art. some of it is annoying. some of it is beautifying of ugly buildings and areas, and some of it is just plain vandalism.

i am not at all conflicted about some of the ways that advertising creeps into my life. i generally disapprove of it.

anyways, i read the blog of a street artist who goes by the name posterchild, and he had a post about an event he took part in

it seems there's a company down in NYC that apparently has a crapload of unpermitted (and thus illegal) billboards. a bunch of volunteers got together and did something about it. in the morning, teams went around and whitewashed some huge number of the street-level illegal billboards. later, a bunch of graffiti artists went around and put various pieces of art on the whitewashed billboards.

the wooster collective describes events with pics.




more links about this and a flickr feed, plus a search of flickr for the 'NYSAT' tag.


this? this i approve of.

Comments

[muffyjo]

Oh wow. That's completely awesome.

[lil-brown-bat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that I can get with. Graffiti so-called artists who decide to tag someone else's shit are, in my mind, no different than someone who breaks into an art supply store and creates "art" on the canvases therein: buy it before you make "art" on it, motherfucker. But this is another matter.