Block Party

From one giant to another – Raro

Raro’s world is a world full of sytle, creativity and imagination. Not my words, they come from one of the most creative writers I know in Madrid. He’s not wrong.

A little bit of Chusky

I recently rediscovered these Chusky photos, I actually thought I’d posted them already. It was a great walk, blew me away seeing so much Chusky in so little time. Where does he get those crazy ideas from?

 

Saturday feels good

The fight back continues…..

Neko – you can’t break me

Neko has been doing ad takeovers for a good while now. Each takeover usually has a limited lifetime, the companies that own the advertising space remove the intervention and replace it with another advert.

I hooked up with Neko last week and he showed me a photo he’d taken of one such intervention. Here it is: http://instagram.com/p/XASbHtoxXu/

Part of the Olvídalo (Forget it or Never mind) series of interventions this particular one seemed to have run its course and the pvc (or is it glass?) panel was left in the street, broken. Neko decided to put the panel back into the advertising space.This Olvídalo was back in action.

After Neko had shown me the photo we made our way to the see if it was still there. As we had expected Olvídalo was gone, or was it? 

It was still there, time to bring it back to life again.

Neko had some new ideas….a remix.

What exactly is going on here? Why hasn’t the panel been replaced? Is the advertising company employee challenging Neko to come up with something new each time?

PS This story hasn’t finished, the vinyl was removed, a new poster was installed……but Olvídalo lived on underneath it…..and it got remixed, again.

Update: And here is that remix…..

Fear of a Grey Planet

Madrid city council has opted to bid for the olympics for a third time in a row. With that comes the now expected buffing of selected walls just prior to and during the IOC visit to the city, (the pope was given the same treatment when he visited in 2011). Selected walls because the IOC are guided here and there on their visit and get to see what the city council wants them to see, so the city council can say buff this wall but forget about that one. The city council seems desperate to get the olympics, some have suggested so that huge amounts of public and private money can be spent and with that the commonplace kickbacks from contracts and tenders. Favourtism is rife and friends and family of people in power will be richly rewarded if Madrid lands the olympics. Enough of that shizness. What this meant for graffiti in Madrid was that for over a week, walls were buffed constantly, I reckon at least twice a day. No graffiti on a buffed wall lasted a day. One morning at 10am when shooting some photos I leaned against a wall and got some evil grey paint on my jacket. What time did they buff at?

Here are some photos mainly from my hood, loosely grouped by spots and in chronological order.

The trees were shown no mercy, the olympics committee might get offended.

All of the above photos are from my hood in the north of the city. But the buff was city wide. Here are some photos from the south side. Shout out to the DKB Crew!

You know when you get that feeling that someone is watching you? Look who was watching me, from about 100m distance. The security guard from his vehicle was taking photos of me while I was on public land taking photos. He didn’t like it when I raised my camera to return the gesture and he moved the jeep behind a hut trying to hide but I walked to one side so that I could see him again. How did that feel cabron? I didn’t realise he had a camera until I got home and blew up the picture.

Each day is a new day and each day the grey fades away. Don’t stop.

Mazo

Juanito, Arem, Zoer, Manera, Snack, Sonek, Kaos, DMS1, Raska

No Camera?

I was in town with my wife and daughter the other day on our way to have lunch when I bumped into Comyk. He was surprised to see me without my camera. But it was just one of those times when I decided to leave it at home and enjoy the walls without anything getting in the way. Sometimes with the camera in hand it feels like the only thing that matters is the shot rather than the experience, but I still enjoy just seeing what’s going on in the streets, the surprise around the corner, the beef, even the buffing and for that I don’t need a camera. On this day although I didn’t return home with any photos on my memory card my head was full of images.

So in this entry there are no fotos, just the names of the writers & artists I saw. Enjoy!

Ruina, Sabek, Buni KR2, Nuria, Borris Hopek, Neko, Luce, Tumor, Hiber MTM, Daryk, Defo, Dulce, Rosh333, Modus, Til, Sue, Smak47, Chusky, Show, Wolf, Bloo and Titi, Mufasa Mordiscos, Mutants, Tal, Marca, Guos…..

PS Lunch was an Indian : )