Art & Film

So currently in Missoula you will find the Big Sky Documentary film festival. This is an annual film festival exhibiting, as the title suggests, documentaries. This festival is gaining more and more recognition each year, and exhibits some fantastic films. This is my first year attending, and the only film i have seen so far was called "Bomb it" which is about street art and graffiti across the world. This film was good and entertaining. It first described the history of "bombing" and then followed to interview contemporary writers from multiple countries. The ones i was most interested in are ones that dont write their names, like the "os gemeos" they more or less just paint images- which i find to be more original in the realm of graf. I am in not so interested in the tagging of your name...it seems overdone outdated and lacking ingenuity. I am interested in street installation and image making. Writing your name seems way too self centered, and only interested in you putting your name on something instead of making something for the people to see and hopefully get something out of it. One thing i like about os gemeos is there connection to the the early 20th century Muralists of mexico and s. america, which was never brought up in this film. Putting images on the wall is nothing new, but apparently writing your name on the wall is, although the film does show some examples from the distant past of name writing, but it obviously is emphasizing the current trends in graffiti and street art--mainly rattle canned, wheat pasted, or stenciled.

one of the most interested bits of dialog the film brought up was the people they interviewed that were against graffiti. One of the major issues was what right do these artists, or vandals as some would say, have to go around and paint on property that is not theirs. I agree there is certainly an issue there, like how would you feel if someone came and spray painted your house? Ultimately most artists said that they only paint on public property, as KRS One said, "if taxes paid for it, bomb it" Which i certainly agree with. One of the major complaints by the graf artists was, who gives the right to all these rich business man to go around buy up our public space and put up an ugly building, and who gives the right to the corporate world to put up horrendous images of men in underwear, naked women, or other crap so they can convince people to buy their crap. To me this seems more of a crime on humans then a few poor kids painting their name. It is bogus that in this world it is ok to put up corporate crap but it is completely looked down upon to put some beautiful piece of art on a public wall.

We are an image based society now, we must stand up and take our visual realm back into our own hands, forget the desires of the corporate, make them earn our patronage through honest displays- like making good products, and not convincing us through media that their crap is good, when in reality is harmful, poorly made, or ethically intolerable.

STAND UP SWIVEL