Moscow Graffiti

Amazing

2008-06-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

This video is incredible:

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

St. Petersburg Graffiti

2008-05-13T19:22:00.001-07:00

No G-8!
Originally uploaded by lyndonk2

I've uploaded a bunch of photos of St. Petersburg street art from a couple of years ago. Enjoy!

Zachem - again and again

2007-08-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

I've posted a lot of photos of the work (in various media) of the Zachem (or 3A4eM, or Зачем) crew - and found their website for the first time today (the caption on the front page says "consume work die") - here are a couple more such pics:

3x Zachem stencil on Petrovka, 6:08pm, March 26, 2005.

Large Zachem stencil on Varsonof'evsky Pereulok, 5:57pm, March 26, 2005.

Mops and a bucket

2007-08-20T13:11:00.000-07:00

"Vedro" means "bucket" in Russian - mops included!
Behind 13 Staropimenovsky Pereulok, April 21, 2005, just after 7pm.

Sovok

2007-08-18T10:23:00.000-07:00

In honor of "sovok" being defined more or less correctly on urbandictionary.com (not news, but news to me - but a full definition should include the word's "straight" meaning - dustpan):

Behind 13 Staropimenovsky Pereulok, April 21, 2005, just after 7pm.

Stencils on and near Bol. Bronnaya

2007-08-17T21:13:00.000-07:00

All of these photos are from April 16, 2005, at around 4:20pm.

Cowboy with firecrackers, gas mask (partially covered), pipe-smoking Indian.

trafAReT / Go! Go! (note that "trafaret" means "stencil" in Russian and that the letters spelling ART are capitalized) .

Basketball net - this was in the same doorway as the "trafAReT" stencil.

Diver holding a big fish.

"Filling the world with color"

2007-08-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Graffiti artists from all over the world have spray-painted the Queens
building named 5 Pointz. (By Frank Franklin -- Associated Press)

An Answer to Its Sprayers: New York's Graffiti Haven

By Sonia Moghe
Associated Press
Washington Post, Tuesday, August 14, 2007; page C03

NEW YORK -- Cave Tirado shakes a can of orange spray paint and begins to emblazon his name on his first American wall. He is not looking over his shoulder or worried that the police might catch him.

Tirado, 19, traveled to New York from Spain, partly to see the city, but mostly to leave his mark on the walls of an old Queens warehouse where graffiti is legal.

"I always write my name," he said in Spanish, while wearing a graffiti-style shirt that also bears his name. "To represent your name -- that's what graffiti is to me."

The warehouse, called 5 Pointz, has become a haven for artists in a city where graffiti has flourished for decades and where officials have waged a seemingly endless battle to keep it out.

The idea behind 5 Pointz was to give people a legal outlet to spray-paint as much graffiti as they like on the five-story building -- without ever having to worry about getting busted.

"The purpose of this building isn't to eliminate graffiti and to be a cure for the graffiti problem," says Jonathan Cohen, 34, who runs 5 Pointz. "It's a place where you can take what you do and push the boundaries to a point where you're doing something that there's no way you can do illegally because you have plenty of time."

Otto Munoz has made graffiti illegally, but he now comes to 5 Pointz to practice drawing and to soak in other styles of graffiti that have made their way here from around the world.

"It's not worth the risk to go out and get two throw-ups [pieces] and get arrested for five years, and that's five years you can't be painting," Munoz says.

There are different types of graffiti: "Bombers" quickly paint simple, two-toned messages, generally their names, onto walls; "writers" make more elaborate artwork.

The writers convene on most weekends at 5 Pointz and paint pieces with bright colors and sharp or curvy shapes on the walls. But as Cohen notes, the walls change every week.

The best view of 5 Pointz is from the subway, where the entire edifice emerges as a patchwork quilt of spray paint.

New York City law prohibits people between the ages of 18 and 21 from possessing "graffiti instruments" unless they are in locked containers. The law also made it mandatory for certain property owners to report graffiti postings on their properties to the city so that they can be cleaned up. Artists have taken the city to court over the law.

But, as Cohen notes, time spent at 5 Pointz is time spent off the street.

"The time that someone spends here . . . working on the building, painting on the building -- they aren't going out and destroying the city, which is a benefit toward the city," Cohen says. "But . . . if someone wants to do something illegally, they're going to do it illegally whether or not this place is here."

Tirado has done graffiti both legally and illegally in Spain, France and now the United States, and says he frequently runs from police.

"We're not killing anyone, nor are we robbing. We're not doing anything," he says. "We're just filing the world with color."

Chisinau - Telecentru underpass

2007-05-30T15:54:00.001-07:00

CIMG9609
Originally uploaded by lyndonk2

Dissenters' sticker

2007-04-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

Image: LJ user drugoi

The sticker says:

THEY ARE GROWING FAT ["During the time of Putin's rule, the army of bureaucrats has grown by 4,000,000 people"]
WE ARE DYING OFF ["And the population of Russia has declined by 7,000,000 as a result of poverty and insufficient availability of medicines"]

DISSENTERS' MARCH - 14 April starting at 12.00 on Pushkin Square

At least I'm pretty sure that's what it says, but as you can see some of the words are blurry. I'm not sure if the first claim is correct, and the second one is obviously an exaggeration - Russians are dying off for lots of reasons - but it seems like an effective bit of marketing for the event.

SPB stenciller gerdaa...

2007-04-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

...has a photopage with a few of her works. On it, she describes her location as "Saint-Putinberg, Russian Federation." I have photos of some of her stencils somewhere - very creative work (and yes, I know it's half-assed to just say I have them and not post them - maybe later). You can read more about her at her LJ.

Education is what remains...

2007-04-15T23:48:00.000-07:00

Photo taken April 1, 2006.
The stencil says:

"Education is what
remains after one
has forgotten
everything he
learned in school"

-some dumbass
named Albert
Einstein

My favorite part of this photo is that the high school in the background is the very same one I graduated from almost 13 years ago (that bit is the rather unattractive newer wing, the older portion of the building is a classic red-brick schoolhouse with a white clocktower). The stencil appears to be a paraphrase of a genuine Einstein quote, though it may be apocryphal. "Forwarded around the internet" does not always = correct, and I can't find it on Bartleby.

Hometown flavor

2007-04-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

View of the Potomac River and Key Bridge (looking from Washington, DC, across the river to Virginia) from an old bridge piling, Oct. 15, 2006.

Dissident street art, Russia, circa 2005

2007-04-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

[Source unknown, file dated June 13, 2005]
This one is self-explanatory, unless you are a poor soul who has never heard of Bob Marley.

St. Petersburg, Dec. 25, 2005.

This one takes the Russian word for victory (победа) and crosses out the first two letters to arrive at "беда," which means "misfortune" or "disaster." The sticker is promoting an opposition website, Diktatu.net (cleverly making use of the .net domain name to say no to dictatorship).

Graf and bums

2007-04-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

Sadly, this is not an April Fool's Day joke.

Moscow, Russia, April 29th, 2005

Paris, France, Aug. 17, 2006.

Budapest street artist

2007-03-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

A gallery of interesting work is available here.

Graf post

2007-02-23T11:55:00.000-08:00

Interesting pics at English Russia. Thanks, MK.

Old Moscow graf, including Visual Artifacts promo

2007-02-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

Photos taken in Moscow, July 2, 2005

Kiosk near Metro Aeroport with a sign indicating
it's closed. Note the little stencil guy.

Entrance to the underpass under Leningradka by Aeroport
metro. The little stencil is advertising the Visual Artifacts
project, which I've been meaning to post about for a long
time. It's a compilation of street art organized by Moscow
artists Bigud' and Ches, among others.

SPB Stencils

2006-04-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

"Trish" and St. Encil," from last summer in the Northern Capital.

Plagiarism

2006-04-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

From a graffiti feature in a free newspaper published in Moscow called "Aktsiia" - they don't seem to be online, so I decided to bring some of their photos to a wider audience. Just to be clear, these are not my pictures. These are from last summer. Click to expand.

More on Mambo / Bow

2006-04-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

I'm finally posting some draft posts that have been languishing in Blogger for nearly a year. This one was originally intended as a follow-up to my initial post on Mambo. I'm sure this graf is all dated by now, and probably some of it has been painted over...

All of these photos are from 2005.

Mambo, betw Spiridonovka St. and Granatny Pereulok, 7:17pm, Apr 12

Mambo tag off B. Kozikhinsky Pereulok (?), 7:43pm, Apr 12

Mambo in courtyard just off of garden ring, 6:08pm Apr 13

"Mambo by entrance to in courtyard off Kamergersky Pereulok, shortly after 7pm, April 17

Mambo in courtyard of Kamergersky Pereulok, 7:15pm, April 17

Elsewhere in the world... http://www.duncancumming.co.uk/photos.cfm?photo=2585

"Dead" graffiti

2006-04-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

These were all painted over (or, "abated," I guess, in industry jargon) when I went back to photograph them again a month or two later. Hence the title of the post. All photos from 2005.

Graf in courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

Graf in courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

Graf in courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

In courtyard behind B. Patriarshy Pereulok, April 9

Tashkent Graffiti

2006-04-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

Some relatively unimpressive graf from Tashkent, photographed during the week of July 20-27 of last year. The first inscription is promoting an Uzbek hip-hop site with some better examples of the local graffiti.

Just the Facts

2005-12-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

Facts gets up on a bin holding, according to the sign, an "Emergency reserve of anti-ice materials." In the background is the imposing Ministry of Foreign Affairs building.

Assorted Moscow tags

2005-12-29T20:10:00.000-08:00

These are some photos from last summer - hardly the best of the bunch, but they're the ones I happen to have already uploaded and saved as a draft post, which is important when you're working with a 30kbps dial-up connection. I'm just trying to shake the dust of a 3-month hiatus off of this blog.

Doors of the Aeroport metro station. The tag seems to be "SME," but I doubt the writer had in mind the standard meaning of that abbreviation - "small and medium enterprise."

Bigud' on a vent. The word is the singular form, which doesn't exist in the dictionary, of "bigudi," which is how you say "hair curlers" in Russian, although of course I have no idea whether that has anything to do with the tag's intended meaning, if any.

FET on an ad placed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs advising citizens to "Inform [the authorities] about suspicious people before you see them on the news" and providing telephone numbers to enable people to do this. On the Boulevard Ring, near Nikitskie Vorota.