Featuring graffiti writer PK interview Streetfiles.org is offline and why should it matter

As the street art or post-graffiti movement is becoming more and more vivid a lot of new “tags” are emerging shaking the dull, cracked , canvas walls of our cities, vandalizing to our utmost delight. Banksy, Blu, Blek le Rat certainly are a tough act to follow, but some new masters of the spray turned out to be up to the task, creating murals all over the world with very distinctive and certainly  attention grabbing voices.

HYURO “I love the idea of being ephemeral . It couldn’t be any other way on the streets”.

photo www.graffart.eu

HYURO is an artist from Spain, she describes her style as having  “the sound of an Air song” translated in black and white image. She often depicts women in a moment of struggle or in a moment of communion with an animal-often a wolf or a tiger; next to birds, or in bird cages,  or fusing with nature.

photo www.unurth.com

photo www.unurth.com

photo www.unurth.com

She attracted attention and even raised a few eyebrows with her mural for the Living Walls project, in Atlanta, where she drew a sort of frame-by-frame animation of a naked woman that grows fur, sheds it, then the fur turns into a wolf .  Even though done with permission, the mural was considered to be too pornographic and insulting to the church and mosque nearby and the locals had it covered.

photo blog.vandalog.com

Hyuro’s progressive mural

Here you can see what the images add up to, as an animation.

Covering of the mural

photo blog.vandalog.com

Hyuro continues to experiment with her style, starting to do more watercolors, and participated in the “Memorie Urbane Festival” in Italy with a mural entitled “Cycles”, a strong depiction of  the cycle of life trough 10 images.

For more images of Hyuro’s works visit

http://www.unurth.com/index/filter/Hyuro

BORONDO is a 23-year old artist from Madrid.

photo www.streetartutopia.com

His characters are mostly ghost-like, shadowy, they seem to be imprisoned in the ruined walls, trying to cry out something. His appearance on the street art scene is really a welcomed peculiarity.

He uses a lot of times a new technique called “glass-scratching”, which contributes to the gruesome fantasy layer that his characters have. Like a lot of his peers, he is a master of concealing his identity and not so many things are known about him, so we can freely judge on our own his intent behind every mural.

photo streetartnews.net

photo borondo.blogspot.ro

photo fracturedpixels.net

You can check out more of this promising young artist’s works  http://borondo.blogspot.ro/search/label/murales

The “hooligan” , PØBEL   is a Norwegian street artist. He opened himself up more to larger audiences by working with another artist, DOLK on a project called Ghetto Spedalsk , trying to raise awareness about the decay and crumbling of some regions of Norway. The project resulted in a series of large-scale murals on abandoned houses, barns, bridges , having a strong political and social message.

photo www.123inspiration.com

The journey was filmed and transformed in a short documentary called “Living decay” narrated by John Fekner, one of the most important figures in street art movement:

Pobel is most known for his drawings of decrepit superheroes, Superman, Batman, Spiderman.

photo www.fatcap.com

photo urbanart-iceland.com

For more images visit

http://www.pobel.no/

Streetfiles.org is  offline and why should that matter. PK interview

Streetfiles.org is, or better say, was a street art and graffiti community, where the faceless and wanting could exchange ideas and techniques and even partner up with other guys and go on a drawing spree. You could make a profile with your street name and post photos of your work, that way    facilitating any sort of collaboration.

PK is a graffiti writer, former member of Streetfiles.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your beginnings in graffiti drawing.

A: Well, I’ve been writing since 2007, mainly bombing, the rawest and most adrenaline charged part of the game, or “vandalizing” as the general public sees it. Like all graffiti writers, I started out as a toy(a graffiti noob), hanging out with friends, drinking and painting stuff around town at night. Most of my graffiti “culture”, so to speak, came from looking at my friends sketches and from of seeing other writers work all around town.

Q: What did being a member of Streetfiles do for you?

A:   Viewing so many photos from writers all across the world, knowing stuff like the city where it had been painted, the year it was done in, being able to message each other, while keeping our identity hidden at the same time,  I managed to filter out what I thought was good and what was bad, I learned new painting techniques and, by seeing other people developing new effects in their own pieces, I learned stuff that otherwise I may have never discovered on my own.

Q: Did you ever meet and go on a drawing spree with someone trough this site?

A: Of course,  having a site where graffiti writers can interact with one another based on the appreciation of their work lead me to meet new people from different places to go and paint with, travel to their hometowns, showing me the best painting spots in their town and I even managed to make a few new friends.

Q: How big of a need do you think there is for a site like this?

A: In my opinion, you can’t say that Streetfiles or any site of the sort is  a must. I mean, back in the ’70′s, when it started they still managed to connect with one another, they still took pictures of their work though, to preserve it, but sharing it with others was on a much more smaller scale as you can imagine and maybe in the end it was better because now anybody with access to the internet and  from a desire to be “cool” starts “doing graffiti” and shares their crap painting done in their grandmother’s backyard. It’s a much more complex thing seeing a painting on the street, realizing the obstacles that the author had to overcome to paint that exact spot, seeing how public that spot is, as opposed to just seeing a picture of  the painting itself.

by Andra Gheorghiu

Andra Gheorghiu is a prolific scriptwriter… nah just kidding! Just a scriptwriter…kidding again! She’s just studying the thing…or is she?

The post THE STREET ART REVOLUTION appeared first on INHALE MAG.

Slam poetry is linked to the Beat Generation of the 50’s trough its style and trough its regard to spontaneity trough performance. The bang happened with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl which showed the power of the two dimensions, that of the words and that of the body, his readings of Howl were actually performances of a strong politically and socially rooted poem that helped create a new movement with Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. “Beat” was opposing to sexual repression and conformity, themes and ideas that modern day slam poets are gallivanting with.

Slam poetry means performing instead of reciting, adding that arousing humanity that a contemporary audience craves for.

With the growing popularity of hip-hop, another exciting form of poetry emerged trough its verse, with a new set of issues and concerns and a new look and sound to identify the poet with, anti-academic and audience friendly.

The person who wrapped it all nice together was the writer Mark Smith in 1984 trough an open mic night held every week that grew more and more popular over the years and has embraced competition form. Smith believes that the slam gives the poetry back to the people and that “we need people to talk poetry to each other”.

The Loud Mouths

Spoken word artists, performers, slam poets are a couple of the terms used to describe the people behind this form of expression, Anis Mojgani, Suheir Hammad, Shane Koyczan, Andrea Gibson, Sarah Kay are just some of the names of the new generation artists. By considering these particular artists you can get a better picture of what slam poetry stands for, as they all have a different balance between meaning, performance, tonality and cheats.

There are also spoken word performances that resemble the hip-hop culture, more of a “Race, Rap, Redemption” (hip-hop music, poetry, dance event) vibe, with artists like Saul Williams or Maya del Valle who focus on race and identity issues.

Use your cipher to decipher, Coded Language, man made laws.

Climb waterfalls and trees, commune with nature, snakes and bees.

Let your children name themselves and claim themselves as the new day for

today we are determined to be the channelers of these changing frequencies

into songs, paintings, writings, dance, drama, photography, carpentry,

crafts, love, and love.

-Saul Williams- Coded Language-

     image source: vashtie.com

Anis Mojgani and Suheir Hammad got known trough HBO’s Def Poetry series.

“I’m twenty-eight years old and trying to figure out most days what being a man means.

I don’t drink, fight or fuck but these days I find myself wanting to do all three.I don’t really have a favorite color anymore, but I did when I was a kid.
And back then that color was blue, and back then I wanted to be an astronaut, an artist, an architect, a secret agent, a ranger for the World Wildlife Fund, and a hobo.”

- Anis Mojgani- For those who can still ride an airplane for the first time-

Mojgani for example is a geeky-looking guy, with a style inspired by Bukowski and Kerouac and he manages to appeal and leave his audience quivering. He takes the mundane, twists it and turns it and in a funny sounding voice and makes you really acknowledge his words. Some of his works are For those who can still ride an airplane for the first time , The branches are full and these orchards heavy, Shake the dust.

Suheir Hammad leans on the strong political message of her writings sustained by her Palestinian-American heritage, as she is not a great performer. She is a political activist and the influence of her poetry has been recognized and supported by TED, where she presents What I Will and Break clustered.

Shane Koyczan wins with his way of swinging from tragic to funny, he focuses more on the story than others, he stirs emphaty rather than rage, or revolt The Crickets Have Arthritis. Not the case for Andrea Gibson who focuses on gender-related issues, gay rights and directs the emotion towards anger.

Slam poetry and influence on audience

“To have great poets, there must be great audiences, too”

- Walt Whitman- Ventures on an old theme.

I understood a couple of things more about audience mentality when I tried to drag a friend to a poetry reading. He was like “Uhm, I dunno, it depends, how long is it going to take? Is it going to be one of those -pulling chairs altogether listening to some guy for hours?”. Besides starting to have some doubts about my friend, I realized that the problem is not only that the audience is not such a big poetry reader any more, thing that has been subject to debate for some time now, but now the audience has a misconception and is rejecting the open mic session format.

And then in this harsh context, the slam movement comes in and is slowly redefining the relationship with the audience and it manages that by having a stake, and a good one to have. The stake for each poet is who can really really do justice to his or her work trough their performance, and of course there is the secondary one of who wins the thing eventually.

Maybe they are not exactly the “angelheaded hipsters” that Allen Ginsberg was depicting in Howl, but they have revolutionized the popular verse in contemporary culture and continue to do so.

Andra Gheorghiu is a prolific scriptwriter… nah just kidding! Just a scriptwriter…kidding again! She’s just studying the thing…or is she?

Photo credits:

Slam poetry @charlottestylemagazine.com

Saul Williams photo © Liberation Frequency

Anis Mojgani © 2013 RAD Photography

The post I SLAM THEREFORE I AM appeared first on INHALE MAG.