Monday, September 18, 2006

Conflux Festival - Saturday


This was a great day for Conflux: it was sunny, warm, and there were lots of intereresting events going on. The most interesting one I participated in was a walking tour of Williamsburg that focused on graffiti and street art. There were tons of poeple along for the tour, and we ended up looking like a parade streaming down and around the streets. The leaders fo the tour rode bikes, had a megaphone, and blasted rap music as they rode along; quite amusing. The tour lasted approx. 2 hours, and covered a pretty large area. Apparently graffiti is the thing to do here. The tour leaders knew or at least knew of all the artists who had created pretty sizable works. Though they talked a little bit about the different styles of graffiti, the loud music, large crowd, and passing street traffic made it difficult to hear them sometimes. So, I didn't really learn about the differences in styles.

I did, though, learn from a different Conflux event that there is a diference between graffiti and street art. Graffiti is more of the "tagging" (spray painted words) variety, and street art can be defined as anything from spray painted drawings to paper cutouts to reworked iron structures, etc.

Though I really enjoyed the tour, one thing that I think it lacked was a clear explanation of the motivation behind creating graffiti and street art. I think the tour guides just assumed that we all knew what the motivition was, but because these art forms get such a reputation of simply being illegal activity, I think it would be good to explain what it's really about. As far as I could gather, and I guess this makes sense considering the emotive nature of art, the motivation/"point" of these types of art is to bring it to the people and put it out there. A huge tag or drawing on the side of a building is really difficult not to notice. I would also guess that they're a form of protestation against "the man" or "the powers that be," but I'm not sure how much "the man" would care about street art on a run down building in a run down area. Although, the cops seem to.

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