If there are two things I love, it’s serendipity and clever urban interventions. As I was working on my Urban Guide for Alternate Use today the two came together when Collective CC in Lisbon sent me some images of their latest intervention, Senioritas.

As most who live in or visit Lisbon and most southern European cities will know from experience, there exists an eagle-eyed population of women who spend their days keeping watch over the street outside their window, one phone call away from reporting any wayward activity to the police – in effect, functioning as an alternate version of CCTV in these neighbourhoods. So within Collective CC’s intervention – in addition to the clever re-contextualization of the role these women serve – is another great visual joke. The signs that Collective CC has secretively placed beneath these women’s windows is a perfect copy of the omnipresent Securitas security/CCTV company visual identity.

There’s nothing about this project that isn’t superb. Well done, guys, and thanks for sharing.

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Today’s preview of an Urban Play artist brings Poland’s Truthtag into focus.

As is the case with putting together any show, there is an ebb and flow to the list of artists as work progresses, but within the Urban Play roster, Truthtag has always had a core position in the show and its larger concept of DIY Urban Design. 

Based in Wroclaw, Poland, Truthtag works at the intersection of street art, urban intervention and architecture, augmenting existing buildings and urban areas with slight touches of shapes, colours and geometric forms. For Truthtag, the city’s built environment is a plug-and-play system, able to be augmented and enhanced in an ongoing, generative fashion.

Working with what he refers to as “aesthetic break-ins” in cities for eight years, Truthtag was recently invited by the Polish Cultural Institute to bring his brand of architectural remixes to London as part of the London Festival of Architecture – a fitting embrace for a fresh creative working with the physical city.

In addition to his fantastic ability to play with the visual context of the building and jam off of its lines and structure, Truthtag also maintains a gallery entitled “changes” which documents how the organic forces at work in nature and the city take their own hand at augmenting and altering his pieces over time. 

I encourage you to spend some time exploring more of his work here.

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Today’s preview of an Urban Play artist brings Madrid’s SpY into the light.

The thing I’ve always liked about SpY is the width and breadth of his work and media. From anchoring glow sticks into the pavement to turn a traffic arrow into a firing spaceship (above), to simply attaching a Pac-Man shape onto a bus stop to turn it into a video game scene, SpY is particularly skilled at slipping urban easter eggs into the daily adventures of Madrid’s residents.

As the excellent street art writer Javier Abarca says of his work, “SpY’s interventions do not jump out at you, they wait until you come across them. They are not a monologue, but rather the result of a dialogue between the artist and the surroundings, between the passer by and the piece.”

On the more aggressive end of the spectrum, SpY has a great love for physically re-working the road barriers and hoardings around Madrid to spell his collective’s name. The re-design of the object, where its final state is identically functional to that of its origin, yet contains a great deal more significance and personality, is always a favourite urban intervention technique for me.

Again, as Abarca puts it:

“This work is a way of giving us back an object like the hoarding, whose ubiquity had made it virtually invisible, and, with this, it opens another small window on a certain activation of the consciousness, on a slightly sharper perception of the surroundings. Which is necessary in a city that silently contemplates how fountains, benches and, in general, the possibilities of using the public space disappear, among other outrages.”

From the aggressive to the sublime slight hits as below, it’s been a pleasure to work with SpY and get to know him in the process. You can enjoy more of his work at his website here.

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And here’s Josh’s previous work which it was inspired by:

I was emailing back and forth with Josh today, and he said he did an ad with Ogilvy New York, but wasn’t sure where it was going to run, so now he, and everyone, knows. Of course, I’m really happy that this is all legit, because for one, I really like Josh’s work, and also of course because I’m featuring him in my Urban Play project in Amsterdam, so it’s always good to see a worthy artist get some buzz all around.

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Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of Mark Jenkins‘ work. What always impresses me about his body of work is not only the quality of the finished pieces, but the way in which he integrates them into the urban fabric. His storkers can often be found playing with and in the cast-off areas of the city, creating both a sense of delight and tension in their innocence bordering on misadventure, while his embeds turn the otherwise anonymous areas of the city into theatrical arenas of intrigue and almost discomfort for the passers-by. But with his latest work in Barcelona, he has hit a new stride.

The piece shown above is The Golden Ass – one of his embeds, this time hacking the world of street theatre and people masquerading as “living sculptures”. For those who aren’t familiar with Mark’s work, his “embeds” are hauntingly realistic sculptures he creates out of tightly rolled newspaper, then shapes, clothes and installs accordingly. So, yes, there isn’t actually anyone inside the donkey costume – a fact delightfully lost on the spectators. Being particularly impressed with the piece, I had a conversation with him today about it. As Mark explains:

“I see a lot of performance artists trying to become sculptures or playing dead/frozen these days and so it’s nice to meet them half-way on this one.

“Part of the camouflage was to put a coin bucket in front of the piece, and surprisingly the piece earned over 200 euros that day (before diasspearing in the night) so i think the commerce of street art in the gallery… while interesting, to me it’s as interesting pimping a street piece like this direct, and it makes a point in itself.”

As he says, it is the direct nature, even the direct funding, of this piece that really brings it home. While the whole people making money by standing really still for long periods of time Living Sculpture phenomenon has become a ubiquitous part of the urban tourist experience, the tips offered forth by the public are always for their roles as performers (or pity – it’s a sliding scale). Yet here, even unbeknownst to the public, the money put forth is for the performance of the piece of art itself. It’s a brilliant urban hack on Mark’s part.

Lastly, what resonates with me is of course the title of the work, The Golden Ass. One of the great fantasy stories of literature, it is the tale of how the main character, Lucius, falls victim to his over-enthusiasm to witness a magic act, and accidentally gets transformed into an ass. As such, he is put to work and is forced to witness and share the misfortunes and hardships of the other slaves and workers who are exploited at the hands of the wealthy. Anyone else feeling the analogy here?

Harkening back to University literature classes here, I was also drawn by the significance that The Golden Ass begins with a charge to the reader: “intende”. Literally translated, it means “be attentive”. But it is a conditional phrase also, meaning that if you are attentive, then you will take pleasure in this experience. So, as parable, for those who see merely a Living Sculpture on the streets of Barcelona and offer a few coins to it, there is a certain level of appreciation. But for those that pay a greater degree of attention to what is taking place in the macro of the piece, there is an enormous amount of enjoyment within the work.

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Photo Credit: Joao Pina for The New York Times

The New York Times just published a fine article about the dilemma facing Portugal that a collection of the famed Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa’s papers might be sold and leave the country. What drew me to the article was the fact that it was on Pessoa, for whose work I have a great appreciation, but what brings me to write about the article here is of course the stencil graffiti illustration used in the piece and its larger significance.

I remember seeing this stencil the last time I was in Lisbon. It made a great impression on me then for the same reasons that bring me to write about it now, but the fact that it is the illustration for this particular article brings it to a new light.

There is a quality in Pessoa’s image being painted on the streets of Lisbon that anchors him to the city in a tactile, visceral way – the same way that he himself is so strongly anchored to the city. He was born in Lisbon in 1888, and lived there for most of life, a virtually unknown writer publishing little of his immense body of work before ultimately dying there in obscurity in 1935. Certain authors have always had an inseparable connection to specific cities. I think of Miller’s writings of Paris, or Hemingway’s fondness for Madrid, and of course Kafka’s embodiment of Prague. To think of these authors and their respective cities is to imagine their image cast against the physical streets of the city. In Lisbon, someone has literally done just that, and The Times acknowledges this testimony of individual action with their illustration.

As always, I find much larger meaning within this intervention than what is seen the surface. Let’s frame this stencil in the perspective of creating a public tribute to Pessoa in his home city. Imagine the individual who created this stencil decided that he was going to petition the city to create a new public monument to the poet apart from the rather uninspiring one which exists in front of A Brasileira. First, of course – would they have access to the city officials to get the proposal, or letter, even past the first filter given to public correspondence? And, if so, then think of the immense amount of bureaucracy, competitions, commissions… we are now looking at several years of process. And even in an alternate take – if the individual petitioned the local authorities with the desire that not only a public portrait be created, but that the artist put themselves forward as the one that would then create it? Mega-million lotteries hold better odds.

So, instead, in the course of a few hours, the stencil was made, and, most likely, in a few seconds in the middle of the night, the tribute was created – by the people, for the people in a direct creative action. No permissions, no commissions, no waiting.

But what is more, the image itself holds a tragic beauty beyond that of Pessoa himself which resonates with Lisbon. One of my favourite cities by far, Lisbon holds a beautiful if at times sad reminder of its past empirical grandeur. This is found within the portrait of Pessoa himself – his immaculate, stately attire, taken so much for granted at the time, but now a symbol for a past prominence in himself, in his home city, that is more reminder than reality.

Of course Lisbon has found a new confidence in recent years, a renewed vitality that brings the warmth, romance and brilliance it holds within the beauty of its stone-filled city to the surface. And in the stenciled portrait of Pessoa, I find that hope of renewal as well. His gaze looks literally to the street itself, in contemplation. In anticipation.

A staggering beautiful tribute to Pessoa, done fitting tribute by The Times.

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Last night CutUp installed their latest batch of work throughout London. For those of you not (yet) familiar with CutUp, they specialise in physically remixing the urban visual, taking down billboards, cutting them up into pixels, and re-installing them to create new images out of the original source material. While my personal favourite medium of their work is large-scale billboards as above, I also enjoy their bus stop hits, where they hack the lightbox adverts with their own remix. Here, a Spiderman poster takes an unexpected turn:

Most satisfyingly though, last night I got to spend some time with the guys and talk more in-depth about their methods and process. What can I say – I heart CutUp. For more photos, see the flickr set here.

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DAMn magazine asked me to do a piece on artist Mark Jenkins, and I obliged, as I love Mark’s work and writing about it is always a pleasure. The issue has just hit the stands, so check it out.

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