snaps | faile @ shanghai ::
:: taken in Shanghai at the intersection of Tongren Rd. and Yanan Rd., a Faile sticker spotted on a traffic light. For those who aren’t familiar with Faile, they are a contemporary urban art collective of sorts, founded in Brooklyn, New York. You don’t see their stickers in China much, if at all. To read more about their last stop in Shanghai, link here and here. // XD
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June 29th, 2009 at 12:05 am
I know of that collective, and they have done some great work. But I don’t care how hipster cool it is, vandalism sucks, and it’s never right to deface public structures or someone else’s property. If you’ve ever lived in a place wrought with the blight of graffiti, you’d know that it’s a very pleasant thing that Shanghai exists largely without it, save a few small examples somewhere and the mobile numbers advertising fake documents. Let’s please not glorify graffiti and call it ’street art’ when someone spraypaints their illegible tags on bridges and overpasses.
June 29th, 2009 at 12:21 am
@ Ticker, thanks for your response. You make a fair point of view. I agree, illegible tags on bridges and overpasses are not exactly “street art,” but they are a form of expressiveness – and that’s something I can’t bring myself to rally against.
// AjS
June 29th, 2009 at 1:54 am
This particular ‘tag’ is a sticker. Paper sticker. Not paint, not defacement. It will naturally come off in due time with rain.
I emailed Faile, and asked if they were about, but they’re in sunny NYC.
I myself have also contemplated random acts of beautification, and still think about adding some surreptiously placed 8bit art mosaics in a suitable place at some point in time.
Does that make me a criminal? Maybe, but i’d rather be inspiring, than bland.
// XD