inches, miles and the marginal efforts in between

lasn says: every small part counts.

I have felt that the insignificant poisons the movement. the ugly scars the beautiful. the billboard fight is best fought with pieces that up the ante. but upping the ante ain't always pretty. have i been too elitist in my views? i think so.

we are all trapped in the spectacle. the situationists tried to free us. they fell apart. decades later, here we stand fighting the good fight with that which is moves, minds and souls alike. we cannot discriminate. an unbecoming public piece is a piece none the less, and a political act as any.

liberate in all shapes and forms, make a statement in all ways, great an small.


the past is now part of the future and the present is much out of hand.

break with tradition, because tradition withholds. free yourself from the status quo, and while your at it, liberate the street cars - littered with ads - and your neighbours polluted minds.

lasn makes points without explicitly acknowledging subjectivity, but these are meant to spark criticism, because the bullshit of the objective 'ads' and 'lobbyists' fall into the same traps, but hide it better. he is balls out because balls are what is necessary. the sooner we realize that conservatism is a choke hold and liberalism is a smoke screen, the better off we'll all be.

is pollock someone to consider?


"and I don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident"

"the modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces...the modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating."

"my opinion is that new needs new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements. It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age....in the old forms...each age finds its own technique."

"Paintings, i think, today -the more immediate, the more direct - the greater the possibilities of making a direct - of making a statement."

"technique is just a means of arriving at a statement."

[Jackson Pollock. all taken from an interview w/ William Wright. c. 1950]


Technic is the result of a need
new needs demand new technics
total control ---- denial of
the accident-----
states of order----
organic intensity----
energy and motion
made visible----
memories arrested in space,
human needs and motives----
acceptance----

[Jackson Pollock. Handwritten Statement. c. 1950]

i think i'm finally on to something...

Honestly, the opening quote is powerful. The only reason I kept watching was in hopes that it would be realized by those carrying out the acts it inspired....

it never happened

I was watching a film documenting the various Reclaim the Streets movements around the world. Watching these people, full of anarchy, shut down the streets for a day just to throw a rave and then go back to their lives, I felt betrayed. Both by the name, and these hoards of people that swore by it, had planned to retake the public spaces they pass through each day; spaces whored out by corporate thirst. It was a shame. They take an idea, a beautiful idea, and then burn it to the ground. Degenerates, anarchists, luddites and melon munchers, these people have no directive. I think that is what I found most disenchanting was that there was this awesome power of cooperation, of love and of freedom turned into an acid trip for lame duck hippies and white collars looking for an afternoon of escape. There was something there, but all of this degeneration amounted to nothing. There is definitely something to be said for deconstruction, but only when it is married with constructive ambition. To tear apart alone is to create unnecessary chaos.

-shutting down the street, garbage not beauty

They shut down a street in London, which in writing, or at least in the way it was relayed in the voice over, sounded beautiful. They would cast out all that which was trapped indoors out into the streets creating a lasting outdoor livingroom. This of course quickly deteriorated into a garbage laden lane filled with vagrants an unsafe obstructions, not exactly the place you'd want to bring the kids for a getaway. It was a horrible miscarriage of a wonderful idea. How quickly things can fall apart when those in charge aren't.

-cars crashed in streets, mindless destruction and who will clean that up when we all lose our jobs?

To start of many of the street-raves individuals would junk vehicles by crashing them into one another and then lighting on fire, painting and outright destroying them to be left in an 'unmoveable' (but fully moveable) roadblock. Awesome. There was actually footage of children pulling away doors and, again, vagrants doing their business right up in there along side. After all, who can ask for better role models than a group of car-crashing, indecent-exposing, daylight drunks? Anyone? People with jobs maybe?

I'm not anti, and I don't feel that menial tasks are healthy rewards for anyone. But this anarchy did not amount to Martin-Luther-change, nor did it really change anyone's mind-- except maybe mine in that I was so disgusted with what I saw that I immediately was inspired to distance myself from anything 'reclaiming the streets.' Still, this IS a good mantra and perhaps it needs to be RECLAIMED by the not-so-lame doers from all these unrighteous ravers.

-lame music

Bad music doesn't inspire change, and pounding bass just gets your neighbours pissed. It's true, my neighbour hates me, but then I wasn't trying to incite public revolt with my late night Silent Shout-a-thon.

-"I want to be here to end money, so I don't have to work, and so I don't have to use my car to drive to work for the money that will no longer exist" (paraphrased) WOW. the straw man lights a match. awesome.

Honestly, the problem here is obvious - good ideas mixed with stupid people. As I watched this film, trying to pull away some parallels between what I had assumed to be the 'reclaim the streets' movement and the graffiti that I've been searching for, I realized how futile the whole attempt was. Perhaps more unsettling was the fact that there were strong parallels between what I was watching and the unsightly neograff I encounter on a daily basis. The commonality is that rape of a beautiful idealism thrown into the gutter by some strange idiots. the ideology seems to float above the acts themselves and it is never firmly rooted. They build from the ideology down, rather than planting it in the ground an letting it flourish. They strangle the life from a good idea and pollute it with quick, half-assed follow through. It's a damn shame. Who are they? Why do they seem to prevail?

"Isn't this true of photography, of art, of everything?" she says.

"Probably.."

"But that doesn't mean they win, they don't succeed and the idea is still there waiting to be acted on"

"Yeah, but time is running out and I'm left asking... when?"

I have begun to frame this failed search. There are no politics in graffiti beyond should and shouldn't, yes and no. The sphere is collapsing in the real and this world of established letters and formulaic postings is being balkaned off like hot chips at an auction stand for people on Atkins. I am lost. Please find me a way out.

I am searching

graffiti is based on individual principles. These are carried forward by those who seek to better the landscape, the public and the political spheres within the communities it touches both literally and figuratively. We need the vanguard to carry forth that which we lack. We see this in all politicized acts, from that of the politicians to the working class. People cry out for a hero to bring the thoughts and struggles to the forefront of public discussion. "Make change" they cry out in return. These are the words, and the words can hurt or they can be constructive; forming the foundation from which to build. This is what I hoped to find, instead I am surrounded by images of mediocrity. "Truth is the best poetry;" the voice of the struggling souls searching for meaning in this cruel cold world. Where are these poems? Surely they cannot be disguised in crude repetition of unauthorized names. Self branded legions of creative drive wasted in the back alleys and gutters of the city... where is the beauty? I have seen perpetuation of a movement lost, neograff boasts the practiced techniques of the past, while post-graff lacks any sort of well bound direction. It is sparse, it is few and far between and it is getting pushed to the periphery while hot heads fresh from watching style wars in their parents basement are the ones who push old ideals that never made the sort of impact they floated in ideology. It is a sad day to find that the search you once had prided yourself for persuing was filled with nothing more than boring remediation of spoiled conquests and lost meaning. Where is the line? Where is the victory? Where is the graffiti that I know can exist; does exist in other places, but why not here?

blasting caps and convulsion traps.

It's been months since I began this search for meaning. If you think that's worth more than two hundred dollars I'd really appreciate it. Sadly it's not, and I have not come to any solid conclusions. I set out to find political treason in symbolic scrawl and life behind the ephemeral tags of the urban landscape. It is frightening to discover, in the perusing through my photographic survey of the streets, that it doesn't exist. Graffiti in Toronto is boring. And I am yawning to write this. yearning for life? couch friends!

So I guess this is more of a weekly thing, I hope you all don't mind.

[Sixten piece]



Let's Dive Into Graffiti Perspectives Shall We?



Castleman’s work was obviously built on by Austin. I am still searching for a piece of writing, criticism, analysis that does not fall into the trap of fame. This is not a David Bowie song. I have some faith in MacDonalds work, but she still approaches it as a wide sprung glorified youth fad. What about the reclaim the streets movement? That is just a bunch of hippies shutting down blocks for hours at a time. Burning cars is more productive than writing?

I found an interesting piece today. It was simply scrawl, no style…all it said was: “No one reads graffiti” The deadpan of it all was delicious. Why doesn’t anyone look into the legitimate protests? Why do the most ridiculous idiots get all the coverage? Why does all the scholarly coverage take a dive deeper? Does this work even exist in this city? All our authorized pieces fall…well kind of flat…I mean what is with the giant penis at the corner of Front and Bay? Is it a beached whale? Our contemporary artists are doing beautiful things, now if they could only take it into the streets. But perhaps this is a sour reflection on the way we run the city.

I met a kid a few months ago, stuck paying a ticket with his student loan. I asked him what the story was and he said he never even finished the piece. It is a battle. I don’t doubt it, but maybe the authorities would be more welcoming if we had some decent work that wasn’t just an acid trip into NYC circa 1980...

Give me some suggestion, because I'm losing my faith in graffiti. Toronto-wise anyway. This guy's fucking awesome.

battle scars

Spadina Street Level Tag

A large CS crew throwie over takes the loading dock doors of a wear house in China town. CS is evidently in a feud for the area with GR. I am not familiar with either of the crews but this territory full of markets and a huge amount of traffic is one to be coveted by anyone wanting to get up. The throwie here is a two-tone fill-in with an outline. A tag like this would be done in haste but is done by someone with a great amount of practice as the skilled black and white outlines are finessed over the sparse white fill. The grey-scale quality of this piece makes it appear in contrast to the colourful baskets, buildings and fruit stands in this environment. The GR! In red bleeds out this tag and X’s out the crew. A crossout is an insult in the highest degree in this culture, thus this heated exchange no doubt is a continuing controversy. Simply put this is a territorial claim overthrown and instep with a diss. The use of red over the colourless original is both a vibrant insult and a distancing mechanism.

Battles like this can be seen playing out across the city on a regular basis, but not as frequently as the hayday of graffiti crew wars. Most artists coexist peacefully with little reason for conflict...the changing scapes in the city constantly provide new space for new work. The only dissing that occurs is when a relatively obscure or new writer (toy) takes the space or crosses out the work of an established one. As I was once told

"We don't beef, 'cuz were mostly all on the level. The only problems arise when some fool goes over our space or our work. See we know all the kids 'round here and they're glad to destroy some fuckup. They'll call them out and never give 'em a chance to breathe. Other than that its all love, and the cops leave us alone cause they only want the gangs." -ANONYMOUS WRITER

Those who are struggling to establish themselves, or possess an ill conception of this world are the ones toys fall into this trap. On the flip side writers who aren't so kind as the one I've quoted here will criticize the weaker work they feel obstructs the path of the righteous who in the public eye get painted with the same brush. This fear that someone will 'ruin it' for everyone else lends itself to a tricky distinction and, as with any art, worth is in the eye of the beholder. Gold to some may be gawdy to others, and gawdy to the king may be beauty to the masses.





Phone Booth poster (Spadina)

On the streets many forms are implemented. Here is a piece done in the comfort of ones home or studio with great care and attention to detail. The artist needs not fear getting caught while producing the work so great care is taken and time given to the detail. The faces bleeding out of other faces implies a connectedness of even the most strikingly differentiated faces. The use of line for depth and texture implies some classical training (formal style) while the imagery itself lends itself to the tradition of street art. The skewed and ugly monikers draw attention from the banal, the mundane. A piece like this symbolizes blank stares of strangers, grouped misunderstanding, indifference. The artist is filled with disdain. Its placement leaves it in plain view of any pedestrians and the irony of it being on the side of a communication device could be mere coincidence, but is intriguing nonetheless. Faces in the clouds? Could this represent the common day dream of the population, connected but disassociated? Could I just be reading too heavily into it all? It was plastered here quickly and with little effort. Items like this may not last as long, but they are easy to repoduce, to apply and offer little risk for the artist of getting booked.

Tags and throwies are rampant along the doorways and side streets of the city. They range in terms of lettering, and content. Some are abstracted letters of the alphabet, but in a city that prides itself on multiculturalism, there are many alphabets to choose from. One can get lost just in trying to decipher the range of characters on the walls, which make up the body of Toronto graffiti, however I feel the more important contemplation is spent on determining the significance. Few citizens bother to read into them at all – or that is to say the majority of the tags and bombs that face of the scene in this city. These mostly communicate back and forth between the artists and writers themselves. Fleeting battles waged are encapsulated in ephemeral works. My interest lies in the pieces that reach out to the community. The work that speaks to the world, not that of the night marauders who deal in public space.

Street graphics push the limits of the written word and animate the static landscapes they fill in. This is true for the tags as well as the pieces – but so do the corporate posters that litter the same space. The politics behind unauthorized works of art in the public domain is something that intrigues me. Neoliberalism pushes for the privatization of the globe while the movement against the financial strong arming of communities and rape of that which is public pushes the limits of creativity and contemporary attention spans. That said, some of it is pathetically shallow. The drastic void between relevant works and markings that do just as much damage to any forward momentum is miles wide. Tags littered across the cityscape may be a big ‘fuck you’ to the corporate suits and ad agencies, but they are just as damaging to padestrian eyes as any poor ad. Good ads exist; bad graffiti exists. These points of truancy do not change the fact that the political motivation behind each side falls on either side of a huge fence. And as both sects find ways to tear holes and climb across this divide, it becomes harder to tell the difference. Graffiti advertisements and commissioned pieces; commercialization has dragged the medium through puddles of appropriation, aped styles and bad taste. Marc Ecko nearly ruined graffiti for the diehard writers and then for the investors. He sold something that was at its heart free, he spread styles from the streets to suburban closets, and then when that wasn’t enough he made a video game which tore down the principles of the form to vandalism, gang wars and clichéd style. He fed false meanings to the masses and built up a strawman for the detractors to burn to the ground. Luckily you can kill authenticity, but you can’t kill an idea and political work is still the backbone of a flabby cultural revolution.








Graffiti has been worked and reworked, built up and torn down from the early 60s through the glory days of the 80s gallery scene, the backdrop of the rise and fall of hip-hop and the y2k technology bubbles. Writers have been looking for new ways to express themselves with simplistic tools, allowing the mastery come through the work itself. Challenging the status quo, pushing the public to the edge and constantly reminding the people that these are our streets. Graffiti works in two directions with respect to this idea. On one hand are the people who advocate street works, feeling that the beautification of their city is better handled by fellow citizens, living in harmony with the colourful patterns and designs; while the other sect is reminded that the streets are free, that we should take in to question and careful consideration everything that makes claim for the space we all share, and are pushed into a frenzy of scrutiny rather than passivity and complacency. Graffiti doesn’t sell anything but ideas. The exception of course is when it gets co-opted and aped by the ruling class who seed their lust for dollars into an urban campaign, so transparent.







FOR LEASE, a light show running across the front of a building that was for lease, how creative right? is no place safe? AD AD AD!

birthdays are shit, especially when handled at a bar that is used to...well i don't know exactly what they were used to, but a group of asians with cameras shooting the most random shit and taking ubiquitous shots of tequila matched with REALLY SHITTY italian beer compiled with NIGHTSHIFT covers by a random jazzy funk quartet...well thats a landslide victory for any shit head carying the shit. ron will no doubt post the shots and they will soon be global so there it goes. anyway ... good warm ups, shitty midrange and adequate pizza (some college spot) ads up to.. a decent night. then the cabbie jammed on some punjabi dancehall which killed any bullshit radio wave alternative...plus the whole fairness docterine along with PUSSY CRTC requirements make all canadian radio unlistenable so...way to go kumar, thanks for the real spot.

beyond that, the night was beautiful, i will celebrate with some tea and a biopic on ian curtis. hazaaa. jade, ron, and macro asians haazzaaa. drive safe my friends, if you beat the system then, well, the system sucks anyway so....goodtimes!

what the fuck happened to hip-hop? i mean really. fuck nas and his proclamation, because his over hyped attempt at relevance falls flat - he isn't worth a damn thing since the 90s...like all of it. Ghostface is trying desperately to relive those years with a pathetic remix/issue of his earlier work. yeah it has 'new' verses but they suck. so who cares? not me. that's for damn sure. the whole scene is like when you're trying to find something to wear, and you spend all this time digging out something worth while that fits your mindset...and then you find the right moodworthy attire but it fucking rips because its shitty cheap labour made clothing and you wish you had shopped at a real store, not fucking ________. so then you wish you had just stole the clothes in the first place, which you practically did through heavy discount - and somehow they still over charge and are still going bankrupt... oh iron...ic? to the fucking shirt. so you dig some more and find something else, but you already wore it to a dance party and it smells like an obese beast rolled over it in an attempt to get up after sweating so huge from the stress of eating...and falling down. yeah that's what the ghostface album is like. utter garbage. why listen to it? fuck you wutang, i thought we had something, then you went and cheated on me with irrelevance and puke and really bad descions, well guess what? i've got news for you, your sister called and she thinks i'm kinda cute. so we're hooking up next week, and you won't be able to see the kids....!

→ graffiti crews, and areas form their own way of communicating with little to no concern for how it is received outside of their limited social circles….this is not always the case, though when is the choice made, is it a conscious decision, is the exclusion necessary, is the excessive abstraction necessary, is it there ‘for art’s sake?’ is the writing on the wall always a vernacular? Does it always target one group? What are the challenges faced by a writer who wants to leap outside of the structured boundaries? What are the challenges faced by those who want to remain within, are we - those who study – breaching their world in an unwanted way, should it be left not understood, non legible scrawl across the landscape?

tags are ugly, but so are first choice ads, -- if we ban them all we've got grey walls to eternity ... and we all saw how berlin ends.

working out is tiring my bones.
my muscles hurt from stretching,
and 8 minute abs is 8 minutes of hell.

never stop working out again. fall off the train, slow to catch, hop back on, or count your flabs.


I met a girl from Texas the other day, she spoke just like me.

television, globalized capitalism, McJihadNBC and the death of music videos has killed accents. how many years have they got left?

(you can't be taken seriously with too heavy an accent, but you can't get laid if you sound like everybody else.)

4:59 - art in essence is what we sell as art.

growth? the development of a stomping ground, a particular regional development through aesthetic practice? is this a conversation? a billboard? are we being sold, or are we engaged in discussion?

a man is drawing me right now. i did not authorize him to sketch my likeness, why do i care though? he seems pretty jamming, i think he may be rocking out to darkside..

TODAY is THE day

2:53 - side tracked with taking the puppy for a walk. the warm weather and melting snow stuck to her chest like the abominable snow dog. she still sucks with other dogs. it's a shame. then tangented again with slow-cook salmon, a smoothie and new order. vitamins and classics, never spelled nourishment so well. I am off to the library right after this cup of Sri Lankan Gold, a damn shame indeed. WILL BE BACK SOON. RESEARCH CALLING.