Wooster Collective's talk at Conflux
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But once in a blue moon, you listen to someone else's words and feel like you're falling in love. That's what i experienced a week ago when i heard Sara and Marc Schiller from Wooster Collective talk at the Conflux festival in Brooklyn. I've been following their blog for two years now and it was great to finally get to know who and what's behind one of the best site that documents and celebrates ephemeral art placed on streets in cities around the world. The title of their talk was "What is it about street art that inspires us?" What inspires them has no particular set of rules nor well-defined criteria, it's an "emotional thing." The talk tried to break down the DNA of street art, without pretending to be a dogma or a text book, it's just the gathering of their thinking of two persons who've been following and documenting very closely the street art scene since 2001. Street art, 3 critical ingredients:
1. Location, location, location! It has to be illegal. A work of street art reclaims the public space and the best street art has a context, builds a relationship with its environment, dialogs with the city. Most of the artists document their work on the web. It doesn't mean that street art is meant to be seen on the web. The art has to be left in the street where it might stay for months or just half an hour. Most of the pieces are one-off.
Examples: Italian artist Blu as seen in the image above, a collaboration with JR... or the awesome graffiti of Ghent-based artists Cum.
For two days in October, 2005, a group of Belarusians and Germans took a trip to Pripyat, an abandonned city that used to be home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers. Since Chernobylinterinform was under-staffed that day, the group was accompanied by an inexperienced zone worker. When it was time for lunch, they said they weren't hungry but told their escort that she could go back to the town of Chernobyl to eat. Unaccompanied, they were free to populate the ghost city with their graffiti. The style of the works totally fits the eeriness of the abandonned city. These works are not about vandalism but about beauty. 2. Surprise and delight: the works tap into our emotions and we get that WTF ??? moment. The web cannot recreate that experience but it's still important to document the works on the internet because not everybody gets the opportunity to see one of Banksy's works. Besides, half of the passersby might walk by the work and totally ignore it. Creating surprise and delight doesn't require a particular skill or training, it's more a matter of ingenuity and brillance.
Examples: the "Crate Man" in Melbourne.
or the "embeds" series by tape artist Mark Jenkins. 3. Have something to say: a statement on how you see the world, the best pieces do not necessarily make a strong political statement but they will make you see the city under a different light. Artists let passersby make their own interpretation of the work. Half the people pass by and might never see it though. Examples: Street urinals from hekon2 in Italy
A knitted, pink cosy for a tank of the Danish Army. Knitted by Marianne Joergensen plus some 1000 volunteers. 4. Personal and intimate, the pieces are very subjective. It takes time, commitment and money to craft works (most of the pices are hand-made and one-offs) that might disappear nearly as soon as they have been left in public space, street art can therefore hardly be regarded as vandalism. Once you leave a piece in the streets, you don't own it any more and have no control over it, it belongs to the street. Besides all the pieces change over time, because of the elements and the weather. But that's part of the eco-system!
Examples: littles bees in a backyard in Amsterdam. |
Sometimes you'd go to a conference to listen to someone whose work you admire and the experience turns out to be quite disappointing. 
Nice article, reminds me of a project I did for school once about graffiti:
http://stud.cmd.hro.nl/0764136/jaar1/project3/graffiti.html
joel
Thats really original! I love it
Really gr8>>>!!!!!
The 'shadows' at Pripjat are incredible. Eerie!
I love that big pink pompom hanging from the barrel of the tank! ^_^
I'm so glad you did a write up of the Wooster Collective talk. I very much wish I had been there myself at Conflux, but it's great to get a synopsis! thanks
I'm now inspired to do some street art. Thanks! :)
The Shill of Marc Schiller or
A little background info on the Wooster Collective
Marc Schiller, Wooster Collective's co-founder, is the CEO for an advertising corporation. His company, ElectricArtists, works with other corporations including Warner Bros., Microsoft, and CNN.
http://www.electricartists.com/corporate/clients/
The following is a description copied and pasted directly from the ElectricArtists website:
"
Overview
ElectricArtists is an innovative marketing services company that
develops and implements unique "community based" marketing campaigns.
Led by a team of seasoned marketing executives, ElectricArtists
fosters and nurtures relationships with a client's most influential
audience by providing the tastemakers with brand information that
triggers consumers talking to each other and spreading the word. Since
1997 ElectricArtists has seen 100% growth in PROFITS EACH YEAR while
serving a diverse list of blue chip clients in the global media and
entertainment sectors including Ralston-Purina, Levis, Sony Pictures,
and BMG Entertainment. ElectricArtists success has been given
extensive media coverage with features in Forbes, Time, Billboard,
Variety, ABC's World News Tonight, and others. The company has
expanded FROM its New York base with offices in Japan and England,
thus enabling ElectricArtists to develop and deliver GLOBAL MARKETING
campaigns.
"
Strategic Philosophy
By targeting the "ideal customers" and providing exciting brand
messages, from behind-the-scenes news to downloadable samples,
ElectricArtists converts fans into loyalists and ultimately, into
advocates. Meanwhile, clients gain valuable market research insight
and honest consumer feedback. EA manages the trust and credibility of
your brand so that your message is heard and believed above the
clutter. Yet, the success of our strategies has everything to do with
you. ElectricArtists considers our efforts part of the bigger
marketing picture-if the other marketing pistons are firing, our
efforts will be considerably more effective.
(www.electricartists.com/corporate/about/)
-------------------
"Too much "space" in our urban cities is sold to advertisers and large
corporations. Street artists are trying to reclaim a bit of their
space, even if it means doing it without the approval of the people
who control that space."
Marc Schiller, co-founder of Wooster Collective
(http://training.sessions.edu/resources/interviews/interviews/marc_schiller.asp)
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I mean it is just kind of incredible that so many graffiti artists and street artists
have gathered together to get on board with this man. On the one hand it makes loads of commercial sense to align yrself with Wooster, but how can it be considered in the vain of graffiti, or street art or anything but a marketing strategy?
Unless we think of the street artist as a
self-interested paranoiac who wants to be seen (but not seen) plastering the streets
with their wares. Who naively enters the market disgruntled by the value of production only to turn around and produce themselves. A somnambulist is a person who is too
awake in the morning to put on a McDonald's hat, but too asleep by the afternoon to stop flipping
burgers.
Street and graffiti artists you are smart enough to feel disturbed
and want to change the commercialism of yr city, but you have
becomes beauticians in a competition with capital. If you do well you will be paid with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap. Selling a look.
This is the recipe to extract profit.
Collectors, museums and street art vendors make money off playing the
art market with you. Of course a good collector will do their best to promote
their artist(s). Selling their look to prestigious corporations and collectors, exposing their work on a global level with a website will get the largest return value for the collector. A huge show.
If you bought into Marc Schiller's New York Times article, or the 7 step premiss, you have been sold more than just a paper.
The underground is important, you are important. This, look around, is the life blood of capital; where
the collector's money places bets; markers in a horse race, be new, and above the pace, you will pay off -- if not in the short term, in the longer term investment.
Magazines, books, T-shirts, stickers, curated gallery shows, over the Internet, in museums, or
through private purchase, the art needs to be bought and the artist sold. But everywhere it
is the same and the pockets bulge.
Hi Gias,
what exactly is your problem? yes, we all know of mark's activities. and most of us don't care (well, we're happy he's making a living!) what matters to me is that he has opened my eyes and the eyes of thousands of people to street art. i've never looked at cities the same way after having discovered wooster collective
I read Glas' exact same comments on a Flickr pool yesterday and just thought - how narrow-minded.
I happen to work at Electric Artists, which means I'm lucky enough to learn from and be inspired by Marc on a daily basis. The success of Marc's company is the result of hard work and talent and also a passion to work on innovative projects - which is something that Marc likes to do in and out of the workplace. There are not many people that give of their own free time to put on a show as incredible as what happened on Spring St. last week. Marc and Sarah aren't "suddenly" trying to cash in on the street art scene, they have been fans, promoters and educators for many years - anyone who has ever gone on a Wooster Collective walk or being invited to their house to participate in an art salon will tell you that. They are genuine, energetic and generous modern-day patrons of the art. In fact, much of what they do is behind the scenes and will not be posted on a corporate website because that is the type of people they are - good people who have the drive and vision to make a difference. New York City salutes them - big time.