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Archive for the 'Streetwise' Category
File this one under WTF. Adidas finds a safe rebellion to latch onto to give it some street cred by creating a little action movie about rebel gardeners with GPS, night vision and an assortment of other TV crime show devices. Notice the quasi-’70s-era bongo suspense music. Thing is, gardens take nurturing, building and developing their niches, in other words, an ecological context. Additionally, what about starting a *community* garden? In this case I at least hope once they plant these beautiful set pieces that someone will water them!
Sadly, as much as I think guerrilla gardening is a cool action worth promoting, the ad is so trite and contrived I think most that would potentially be inspired by the idea will see through Adidas’ ploy as yet another tactic to equate fashion with revolution. Rather than pass itself off as a device for urban rebellion, just sell the damn product for what it is: a shoe! And stop pretending your dumb-ass sneakers are a tool for social transformation.
Still in case you are enthused, here’s a link to a nonpartison group, Guerilla Gardening, which may inspire you to do your own action (with or without corporate sponsorship).
And not to disappoint, there are a number of DIY books on how to start your own urban (gardening) revolution:
“On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries” (Richard Reynolds)
“Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto” (David Tracey)
“Guerrilla Gardening: How to Create Gorgeous Gardens for Free” (Barbara Pallenberg)
I beautiful little documentary about a great artist who creates urban portraits in chalk.
Banksy strikes again. One criticism though - with a diet like that I doubt his body would be so fit!
(Via +KN | Kitsune Noir » Banksy’s New Fast Food Caveman)
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The votes are in. Streetsy has posted the most popular photos of street art in 2007. The winner is……
“muck on ludlow”
But I like this one the best:
“unknown, nolita”
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Some photos documenting my obsession with street art. This set is from the streets of Rome.
OK NSA filters, here’s the innocuous headline translation: marking-up modernist architecture. Strange how artistic expression could be interpreted as terrorism. Imagine how in the post-9/11 world a band like Einstürzende Neubauten (”Collapsing New Buildings”) would be misconstrued. It wouldn’t surprising me if certain government elements in their enthusiasm to define everything under the murky rubric of terrorism would classify the destruction of private property as an act of terror. Maybe they have and it was slipped in at the dead of night in the most recent intelligence oversight bill. One can never be sure.
Anyhow, this little side rant was inspired by the great article that I stumbled upon by Amos Klausner snipped below. It has nothing to do with terrorism, but with the curious way that graffiti dialogues with modernism. After the riots in Paris last year there was some grumbling that one of the primary causes of youth discontent was the design of the suburban projects. The architecture had a way of imposing an alienating social structure that made it easy for gangs to control the communities that inhabited the buildings.
I’m in love with the idea that the street remains one of the last pubic free-for-all zones where media and social control can be contested by an anonymous swarm.
Core77 - Bombing Modernism: Graffiti and its relationship to the (built) environment:
It’s easy to see how a generation of restless teenagers growing up in high-rise and low-rise ghettos doubted and eventually rejected modernism and its oppressive reality. For them, modernism represented systemic irrationality, negativity, half truths, poor education, and limited access to economic empowerment. However, when a self-aware subculture rose out of the urban core to embrace plurality, fragmentation, and indeterminacy, something clicked. In retaliation they shaped an honest reflection of their lives from a fundamentally post-modern lens that pitted them against larger forces that had denied them individual value and cultural identity. Adventurous teens did this with no capital and no organizational power. They fought back with one of the few things they could control, words.
“You want information? Take a look at this city, Maya. The graffiti on the walls, the crazy shit the bums and crackheads and wild kids come out with. This is the underground data exchange; the infranet. The city is the hardware and the people are the software.”
Coyote in Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles
“The street has its own uses for technology.”
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Via The Daily Galaxy
