Sydney became LAME
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- MrT0
All the state governments here are a waste of space, which is saying something in a country with so much to spare.
- _me_0
ok - show _me_ a "good" tag - change my mind.
- akrokdesign0
"welcome to the new cultural wasteland.. where artists are now hunted criminals."
have you heard of canvas. use it. most artists does.
and stop bitching that you don't get free spaces in the city to write on. why should you get to advertise for free.- so you just prefer standard advertising in the city. where corporations can ram their messages down your throatautoflavour
- but looking at your recent work, you probably doautoflavour
- hah.akrokdesign
- autoflavour0
next you will be telling me that musicians should only play on stages or in designated music spaces.
- ninjasavant0
Would I rather hear the struggling jazz trio on stage or the guy playing disney covers under the bridge on his trumpet? I'll go for the jazz trio. If, as is common in major metro areas, property owners want to pay good graffiti artists to make a mural on their wall I'm all for it. Good graffiti art makes urban places more interesting and attractive. But does that mean that any two bit moron with a marker or can of paint should be able to scribble some ugly monogram on every surface they see fit, obscuring signs and making urban places look like shit? No. It does not.
- autoflavour0
cant have one without the other. regardless of how you feel. i dont particularly like tagging either, but i accept it as a part of the culture.
also i know that if i dont accept it, it means nothing anyway. writers will keep bombing shit regardless of what you or I think.
- akrokdesign0
dude. if your really into graffiti, why would you give a fu... its always been illegal. noting new.
on the other hand, its a pain in the ass for the tax payers. as they are the one who has to pay for the shh. nothing comes free.
- mikotondria30
...my god man, they'll make drugs illegal next - just trying to ruin our fun.
Nothing's illegal til you get caught - any clash of morality between groups of people still goes on regardless of any temporary legality that one side imposes on the other.- hahakrokdesign
- drugs arent illegal?autoflavour
- why have i been hiding all these years?autoflavour
- tOki0
werd
- autoflavour0
difference is when they make the crime so out of proportion to the punishment, it forces people to make decisions they should not have to make.
ok change of scenery.
say they introduced $2200 or 6 month jail for anyone caught with ecstasy, do you think that people will just treat it the same way.
im not rich by any length of the bow, but $2200 is a pretty hefty deterrent.of course people will still do it, and yes nothing is illegal until you get caught, but if getting caught begins to out weigh what your doing.. your motivations change.
graf has always been illegal .. but this isnt just that. I can be pinned for carrying things which COULD be used in illegal art. I might be using it in my own home on LEGAL surfaces and still be harassed by the cops if stopped etc.
I have to prove my innocence without ever doing anything wrong.
and for what, for carrying some paint or a marker.yes graffiti has always been illegal, but the punishment usually weighed in relation to the crime. even with that, most of the more persistent writers i knew of went down for long stretches not for writing, but the world went with it.
so by increasing the punishment you are just shortening the cycle between street artist and criminal.
and i think there is a important distinction here also, that is between writers and street artists. Not all street artists are writers. Stencils, paste ups, stickers.. alot of these are produced by people who dont tag or do pieces..
naively saying that public space should not be reclaimed due to the actions of one part of a sub culture is just narrow minded. While a good percentage of the population detest tagging, i would put forward that a substantially smaller number of people would detest other forms of street art, and would infact enjoy what they add to the urban environment.
akro, pain in the ass to the tax payers.. listen to yourself.
honestly.
- RIZ0
I don't have a problem with banning markers - I live in Bondi and there are areas down the by the promenade where artists genuinely put their heart and soul into their graffiti pieces - not a marker in sight.
Then you see these lame tags scrawled over their beautiful work and all over bus shelters etc, which I liken to a fucking dog pissing on someones gate. It's vandalism and reeks of disrespect.
- autoflavour0
yeah RIZ but you know those people tag, if not with markers then with cans.
this issue is way too cloudy.. cant seperate tagging from pieces, cans from markers, street artists from graf writers.
those artists who genuinely put their heart and soul into their work only got there though hours of practice. and you dont practice at home in your backyard, you practice where graffiti is.
people disrepect work if they think you dont have the right to work there. doesnt matter how good the work is, unless you are up its only one piece of the game..
of course there is always just a percentage of muppets who piss on everything.. but rarely are these people making any meaningful contribution.
the artists you speak of RIZ got where they are through the vandalism you then criticize. its a hierarchy. fame is respect.
no respect, your work gets buffed- I do see your point there autoflavour, it would gnorant to assume that great graffiti artists haven't tagged at least a few a few times in their lives...RIZ
- it is inevitable.. when they finish a piece, they have left over paint.autoflavour
- and tagging is practice. it is where you learn how to use a different paints, caps, pressures etc.autoflavour
- Juddly0
When they put up the first billboards in Melbourne;
'If you are caught carrying a spraycan, you may be fined up to $2000'Someone hilariously wrote "How much for a texta"... Ha ha..
- autoflavour0
see this is what i mean.. its if you are caught CARRYING a spraycan.
not USING a spraycan.I am a legitimate user of this paint. My work is 100% legal.
Why should i have to live in fear of being having cops stopping me, searching through all my shit, taking my details, having the instance noted incase of future reference.. for carrying these cans home from the place where i LEGALLY purchased them.It is not illegal until you get caught, but likewise its not illegal until you ACTUALLY BREAK A LAW.
- Juddly0
But seriously, fuck those hat-sideways-13-year-old-slack-j... who scrawl mindlessly all over every train station, bridge, wall etc.
One set of stairs near my house has 'Burp' on every single step.
You can't say that is art. It's pure vandalism.
- autoflavour0
yes, but those slack jawed 13 year olds if they manage not to get caught up with all the other bullshit, will eventually likely become the street artists or mural paint you will then respect for their skill.
kill the seed and their aint no crop.
yes its out of control, but that could be more do with how its handled than just it being out of control.
- Is that how you started Auto?Juddly
- no i have always done creative shit, but yep, i did write for a while.. and still sticker/stencil.autoflavour
- autoflavour0
i dont know. i do even write anymore, but after living in Berlin for the past 9 months and be surrounded by a city which has such a vibrant street art community, facing the news of what has changed at home in my absence makes it that much harder to return.
i guess i probably thought being a design forum that designers would see the value in these artforms.
show of hands. who here would rate the work of 123klan or obey?
if you do rate their work highly, then what makes their tagging (be it with can or stencil) more legitimate than less famous writers who you call vandals.
- RIZ0
I can totally see your side of the argument here Autoflavour - and with plenty or reason. I guess the whole point of this is simply that people hate taggers, but appreciate the craft involved great 'street art'. I think you'll find most people who post here will agree. And although there is the question - "How can you appreciate it if you appreciate tagging" - the fact still remains that no one likes their house / wall / car / studio tagged by some young punk with a marker - and that's fair enough. So maybe the government should be spending more money on education instead of draconian measures such as this? But when you look at the kind of results achieved by New Yorks zero tolerance policy it must be hard for local councils and governments to deny the simple fact that the policies will actually yield the results they want to achieve.
- autoflavour0
its not a question of appreciating tagging, its a question of accepting that tagging is inextricably linked part of the culture.. and if you on the one hand like stencils and pieces, then you kind of have to accept that tagging will inevitably come along with it.
i accept tagging as something which comes with street art. its like accepting that if you own a dog, eventually you will step in its shit.
its no reason to get rid of the dog.. you just clean up.maybe a bit too simplistic.. but reasonably sound.
