First Summer Exodus

I'm leaving the USA on May 20th - June 5th to go have the Spring Break I always dreamed of (just a little bit later)! So if you don't get an email or phone call back from me then you know why.

Candalism

Oh boy, oh boy. Just finished my mini-thesis and it manages to cover all the bases. It is(in no particular order, except the first one which is extremely important when living in NY and putting all of your dumb and vain thoughts into a blog like this)

1. Hip. Totally, i meant like totally. Cos street art is to young people what catheters are to old people.
2. Introspective. I mean come on, it's a mini-thesis. These people want precedents and shit!
3. Modern. Since the space race is long over Americans look to new things to lead the world in. We are killing blogging but what about using lasers to cut stencils for religious ceremonies dedicated to taggers? Check.
3. Blasphemous. No one ever made it on the nightly news or into the loony bin without being a little blasphemous. And blasphemy is equally proportionate to fun while being equally disproportionate to morals, but we all know that morals fly out the window when we are having good fun.

Download the pdf of Candalism: Graffiti Prayer and the Age of Meta at my school site. Downloadable print-on-demand book coming. Stay Tuned!


*Warning* This is an unproofed paper abound with grammatical flaws and acabonical* word uses. Grain of salt be gone.

acabonics: (aca-bonics). The sexual reproduction (oral) of academics and ebonics in order to bring street cred to the academic world or professionalism to the streets.

Reminder

Favorite combo of unrelated artist: Gordon Matta Clarke and Zhang Dali's Demolition at the World Financial Center, Beijing (1998). Zhang Dali's work traces the course of Beijing's massive urban transformation of the past decade. Identifying buildings that are scheduled for demolition, he spray paints graffiti-style heads on their walls and later uses a chisel to knock out a similarly shaped void. The photographs that he makes of these scenes emphasize the dramatic contrast between the vanishing and the emerging architecture of the Chinese capital.

Stuart Cudlitz on Air this Sunday

Forwarded from my Major Studio Teacher, Stuart CudlitzDear friends and general fans of random acts of art making,

I am going to be On-Air for one hour this Sunday May 11th, 2008 between 4 and 5 PM Eastern Standard Time.
Here is the deal:

As a part of the 2008 Whitney Biennial of American Art!, Neighborhood Public Radio has been broadcasting from an adjacent storefront on local NYC public radio 91.9 FM.

The NPR broadcasts keep Museum hours throughout the duration of the exhibition and close at its conclusion running from March 4 thru May 31.

If you are in NYC tune in the radio or/and everywhere else go to the NPR.org home page. At the top of the page click on the red text:
Tune In!!!! -this is the link to our stream
Whatever is your onboard audio player will then open the stream from there.

And exactly what do you think I am doing here?

My piece is a one--hour segment of random samples and re-mix of 25 years of answering machine tapes over which I will be riffing in real-time. Call it Concrete Radio and do not be surprised if you hear your voice in the mix because you are all in there somewhere.

Best to you, yours and ours.
Always,
Stuart Cudlitz


Neighborhood Public Radio is an independent, artist-run radio project committed to providing an alternative media platform for artists, activists, musicians, and community members.

NPR has been named "Best Super Local Radio Station" by San Francisco magazine and we have been featured in Punk Planet magazine, Artforum, and the Chicago Reader. As a traveling band of guerilla broadcasters, folks from NPR have hosted thematic broadcasts far and wide, including both Artist's Television Access and Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco's Mission District, Chicago's Version 5 Festival, and a recent trip to collaborate with the neighborly media folks of kuda.org in Novi Sad, Serbia (a trip made possible by a grant from CEC Artslink) and now the 2008 Whitney Biennial of American Art!

Field Guide for Public Works, published

I can't believe it! Today we got the hardcopy of our Book. Our, meaning the Field Guide to Public Works lead by Andy Bichlebaum, Evan Roth, and James Powderly. However, a huge contribution was made by Paola Winograd and Adriana Yoto, whom without their help this book never would have been finished!

This is a how-to formatted book dealing with confronting the public space with interventions both physical and digital, covering the bases on everything from Velvet Strike's guerilla graffiti in First Shooter online games to Women on Waves' doctors who give abortions to women in int'l waters in order to bypass various countries' restrictions.

Further interviews and stories with Adams, Improv Everywhere, Ghostbikes, Molleindustria, Surrealville, Ladonia, Santiago Cirugeda, the Secret mall Apartment, Katsu, Andrea Accosta, the Art Guys, Green Guerillas, Steve Lambert, and others. You can purchase all 178 pages of the book through Lulu for $30.
Or download the on-line size pdf here

Candalism part 2

My investigation of the drippy line permutations known as tags led me throughout various boroughs of New York City. Tags can be found scattered in varying degree throughout the landscape but a high concentration is found on doors. This can be explained for numerous reasons. First, most doors tend to be recessed enough to allow for privacy. In such a moment, one can easily write with anonymity. Secondly, doors are smoother than walls. Most writers use markers with felt tips that are easily torn up on rough surfaces. Next, tags with drips are an adopted aesthetic of the graffiti vernacular. Since doors are a hard surface drips tend to be longer and straighter. The porousness of walls absorbs paint and makes drips either non-existent or thick and overly pronounced. Lastly, and most importantly, doors serve as a social network for graffiti aficionados. They are the time sheet where writers "punch in" and add themselves to the roster of graffiti history. If graffiti was a religion, the door would be the temple.

Taking this quite literally I began to assume that the door was the temple. For a specific demographic it was a gathering place for worship. It was where writers would have a solitary moment of silence and leave an offering. Sometimes they would tag over another writer and other times not. Regardless the dialogue of the door grows thick as many writers circumnavigate entire blocks, boroughs, and neighborhoods, leaving branded doors in their wake, and to borrow a dated term, go all city.

The majority of citizens view these acts as reprehensible territorial markings, akin to the behavior of dogs. However, this form of identity tourism is not a new or unique concept. It has been adopted by the Basque in numerous Aspen carvings, hobo monikering with oil-based chalks on the side of traincars, most notable is perhaps the popularity of the 'Kilroy was here' tag which travelled the world over during WWI. But, of the oldest scenarios is the Japanese practice of Seyncha Fuda.

During the 7th century many would go on a religious pilgrimage to 33 holy temples in western Japan where they would would affix a personalized piece of paper to the temple using a liquid glue equivalent to wheatpaste. The practice expanded to a pilgrimage of 88 holy temples by the 17th century that were to be visited in a specific order. The piece of papers that were pasted to the temples were supposed to give the individual good luck as long as it stuck to the temple.

If anything, the act of leaving one's mark is a universal one. From Nasa's flag planting on the moon to the Lascaux caves, humans have been leaving their mark in an assortment of ways. My investigation of line drawings as interpreted by graffiti artists is just another branch of humans innate need to make an announcement of presence. But tagging alone is just tagging. However, when a tag is made beside another you have a dialogue. And there is no stronger dialogue then within the framework of doors, excuse me, I meant within the framework of the temple.


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INKED BOOK

TeNeues Publishing is putting out the book Inked this fall and my tattoo made the cut. It will be out this fall and can be found at both chain and independent bookstores like Barnes & Noble as well as retail stores such as Urban Outfitters, Crate & Barrel, etc.

check the notes on my palm pilot here