Here’s today’s responses to our question—What
do we call this art movement that Wooster and other sites are featuring? (Keep
sending us your thoughts. As long as we get them, we’ll keep putting them up)
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From Orgone: I think the most accurate term is: *Drum
Roll* “Post-modern satryical public expressionism” *And
breathe* But it dosent exactly roll off the tounge I think its important
that the name incorporate the polictical/satryical natutre of the work, the fact
that it draws from popular culture past and present, that its public, and highly
expressive.

From href="http://www.ekosystem.org">Eko: My definition of what is shown
on ekosystem is : non-hip-hop graffiti.

From
horwitz: “street art is the new dada. dada was in reaction to
the horrible slaughter of WW1 (not WW2) it was an expression of the artist’s
emotions and alienation.  we are, street artists, also reacting   not from world
wars,  but from our environment, whether the message is political, social, or
whatever.  street art is the newest progression. academic art as a whole reached
a sort of climax in the 50’s, after that most everything has been repetition. 
that was because the canvas and the gallery had reached their limits.  they
could no long house this new form of art. the only place to evolve was outward. 
the public gallery, the street.  finally 50 years later we are taking the final
step, we are taking the the ideals of the dada and making them our own.  i say
we call “it”.... lifeism

From
GirlHorsie in Pittsburgh: “I like how the naming of this thing
is tricky, because it itself is inherently tricky. It’s tricky to get the work
up, it’s tricky to want to take risks and cross boundaries but not want to self
destruct e.g. get caught, it’s tricky to want acknowledgement/money/gallery
show… but not want to lose a sense of freedom…  It would be right for it to
defy categorization since it IS defiance. Plus it’s everywhere all the time and
changing and happening in a million media. I want it to be so big and slippery
that it’s fun to tell stories about but impossible to nail down.  Like
Bigfoot.

From href="http://www.lunartik.com">Lunartik in Birmingham, England:
/>
“My thoughts…

We live in the media,
We are the brand
identity of the world.
We create, so advertisers imitate!
The masses
seem to appreciate!
We are the unappreciated,
We are the problem,
/>we are the future!
we write the NOW!
Go do your thing!

/>my thoughts… ta,”

From href="http://www.misery.gov">dividenthal in Nashville: “I use the
term street art as it’s a direct and accurate explanation, but i do see the
ambiguity this could lead to for such a varied art discipline. i agree fully
with new disobedients and poetic terrorism,
but see neither gaining mass adoption.. i guess if we were to take this to the
lowest common denominator level we would call it pretty
graffiti, and that sounds nice in a rhymey kinda way.. but pretty
graffiti or street art or whatever we have as i see it two very distinct sides
to this global wave of beautification and embellishment.. the situationists, e.g
banksy. and the romantics, e.g futura.. i guess if we were to go strictly ‘art
world’ with this in consideration we would have, as mentioned previously, a
renaissance graffiti movement requiring at least two schools. but it’s all
pretty graffiti to me.”

From James Hodges:
“Urban Reclamation I think that a large portion of street art
these days boils down to taking charge of a little slice of the city.  In the
early days of graff, it was about marking one’s territory in an attempt to own a
little part of the otherwise glum city.  Today, it seems that most artists want
to use their art like an “adopt-a-wall”, just in the hopes of brightening
someones day, or reminding us that the streets belong to the people, not the
advertisers or businesses.”

From Kenric McDowell:
Call it ‘free art’. Like, you know, free of charge, free from
the constraints of galleries, etc.

From Onema from
the OMG (OhMyGosh) crew based in Cambridge, UK: “I personally
feel that “post-graffiti” isn’t the best term to use, or any title with
“graffiti” in it, simply because I think a lot of people (mostly non-artists)
have generated an idea that graffiti is just something that messes up their
“pretty” architecture. I think that if you want to give a name to this movement,
then you want to to use something that steers away from the idea of “just
painting on walls”. I agree with Logan Hicks, and I think that Urban
Art is the best term to use. It sums up what we are doin: creatin art
in/for/inspired by the Urban environment that we live in. It is simple and
easily understandable to those who don’t do art, while still maintaining an idea
of creativity and intelligence, not just “vandalism”

From
Mouffiko:  Just 600 million years ago, life on this planet
consisted mainly of bacteria, plankton, and algae, who had happily ruled the
world for many billions of years. But all of a sudden there occurred a massive,
unprecedented proliferation of the strangest creatures you could ever imagine.
This outrageous evolutionary event, called “the Cambrian Explosion,” gave rise
to almost all of the forms of life we have on the planet today. Including in New
York City.

What we have now is a similar situation. For reasons too
numerous to detail here, art has leapt out of more formal venues and onto
sidewalks, lampposts, t-shirts, handbags—anywhere that art can exist, people
are making it. It’s do-it-yourself, it’s subversive, it’s fucking fantastic, and
it’s growing like a chain-reaction. The styles developing today will continue to
influence our visual culture for another 500 million years or so.

/>What to call the current evolutionary event in art and graphic design? We now
live in the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period, which began 1.8 my ago; but
I don’t see “the Quaternary Explosion” working real well. Not sexy enough. I’m
thinking more along the lines of “the Big Blow-up.” Be
creative. Peace.

From Stephen Baker:
“Fugitive Images. Fugitive is a word that can mean lasting for
a brief period, or fleeting.  It describes ephemeral artworks that fade quickly
due to weather, vandalism, and an ever proliferating series of newer artworks. 
Fugitive also describes the artist, often repeatedly evading the law to place
their artworks on city surfaces.