Mustart, Loser #GVM019, Jersey City

#GVM004: The Demolition Chronicles

Here's another working paper, a major statement about contemporary graffiti and its (potential) role in transforming our cities. It's a collection of posts about Green Villian's Demolotion Exhibition at the now empty and about to be demolished Pep Boys store in the Newport are of Jersey City, NJ. URL's, abstract, contents, and introduction below:

• Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/13981255/_GVM004_The_Demolition_Chronicles
• Soscial Science Research Notes: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2630053

Abstract: This document describes a major graffiti exhibition involving 100 artists producing 28,000 square feet of graffiti on the interior and exterior walls of a Pep Boys store in Jersey City. The building has been sold to developers, who will demolish it in mid-summer 2015. Topics include: history of the project, stylistic and thematic analysis of the art, and social context of the exhibition.

C O N T E N T S

Introduction: GVM004 Rises, Falls, Resonates – 2

OK to Destroy: Jersey City’s Graffiti Jam of April 2015 – 13

SP One, What’s he thinking?–  24

Graffiti: From Art Crimes to Family Day – 26

Green Villain Karma: Urban Buddhism in Jersey City – 29

Good Grief! War Boys in the Promised Land – 31

Study in Pink and Silver: Why Not Call It an Installation? – 35

Demolition Exhibition @ #GVM004: Graffiti at the Transition from Industrial to Informatic Culture – 38

Some Styles at the Demolition Exhibition – 40

Sacred Animal Beyond Category: Super-Dope in Layers – 46

Even Heather Mac Donald’s Welcome to Tag-Up at the Demolition Exhibition – 48

Appendix 1: Time Line – 60

Appendix 2: Is it Art? – 60

Appendix 3: Graffing the Future: Is the next phase of human cultural evolution being inscribed on walls by graffiti writers and street artists? – 62

Appendix 4: Sharks in Formaldehyde: New York’s Met and the People Who Made It – 65

Introduction: GVM004 Rises, Falls, Resonates

Let’s begin at the beginning. I am a thinker, writer, musician, and photographer. For the past few years I’ve been functioning as senior advisor to Green Villain, LLC. I have no business card with such a title on it and likely never will. Nor, for that matter, does Green Villain have an org chart, official or unofficial. Not yet. Green Villain is the business of Greg Edgell and assorted associates, as the project requires. Greg is an event producer, DJ, has a record label, and wrangles graffiti writers and street artists on projects large and small.

The Demolition Exhibition has been our largest project so far. This paper is preliminary and partial documentation of it. The bulk of it consists of blog posts that I wrote while the project was unfolding. This introduction is new.

First I run through the history of the project. Then list media coverage, Green Villain’s online documentation, say a word about each of the posts in the rest of the document, list the artists involved, and conclude with a note about the title.

How It Happened

The demolition exhibition just happened. No, it didn’t grow up out of the ground all by itself, but it didn’t arise through the execution of a specific plan of action – at least no plan more specific than “use graffiti for the public good”. Rather, each step of the way we just took advantage of opportunities that appeared before us, with Greg (aka Green Villain) doing the heavy lifting and me providing advice and encouragement at every step.

On the public good, several years ago I’d written a report, Jersey City: From a Skatepark to the World, and shown it to a number of people, including Greg. More immediately, last Spring (2014) Greg decided to install murals wherever he could wrangle walls in Jersey City, New York City, and elsewhere. He’d drive around looking for likely walls and, when he spotted one, he’d find out who owned the property. Then he’d cut deals. The Pep Boys in the Newport area of Jersey City was the 4th deal he landed, hence the designation “GVM004”–Green Villain Mural number 4.

That store’s rear wall, which faces the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, has three layers of graffiti on it.. Starting in mid-August, Jurne, Curve, Twigs, and Esteam of the TGE crew laid down the first layer:

At the beginning of October Loser, Distort, Acro and Ntel of the AIDS – Alone in Deep Space – crew went to work on the second layer:

Friday Fotos: Loser in Jersey City

Dates are when the photo was taken. All locations are in Jersey City.

November 20, 2007: Five Corners

November 28, 2014: Pep Boys

May 22, 2011: Communipaw Avenue

October 31, 2007: Bergen Arches

July 26, 2007: Old Chocolate Factory

Creature Feature: Life on a Wall

This particular piece of graffiti has remained untouched since I first photographed it in late October of 2006. It's on one of the stanchions supporting the 12th Street viaduct taking I-78 into the Holland Tunnel in downtown Jersey City.

Here's the character at the left end, by Loser:

I do not know what the numeral "3" is doing here. The blue lines look like someone went over the piece, a sign of disrespect. In this area that's often the beginning of the end. Others will go over the piece as well and, in time, weeks or months, the piece will be so badly degraded that it will become completely replaced. That hasn't happened to this work in the four years or so I've been observing it.

This photo is from early August of 2007:

This is from December 2007, notice the lounge chair at the lower left and the 14th street viaduct at the upper right:

Here's a shot from December 2009:

Notice the red marking at the right, above center. That was there a year before, but you can't see it in the previous photo as the graffiti itself is too small in the photo. That's the only marking that's happened since the blue lines.

Here's my most recent photo, from July 2010. Notice the yellow throw-up or throwie at the left. That's new, but it doesn't go over the older graffiti, so it's legit. There's also a throwie on a concrete slab into front of the stanchion -- left of center, black outline in white.

ADDENDUM: This photo should give you some sense of the scale of this graffiti:

The man is a bit over 6 feet tall. Notice the paintball marks at the upper left.

ADDENDUM 2: After Irene:

They Killed This Tree Three Days Ago

Trees being what they are, I suppose it isn’t really dead yet. The leaves are still green. Sap still flows. But the tree won’t survive. No one’s going to sit it upright, no one’s going tend to it.

The killing wasn’t personal. I’m sure they didn’t have any special animus toward this particular tree, nor toward any other tree, or plant, or animal that was killed, nor even for discarded trash that got moved around when they came through. They had a job to do, clear a path to the construction site, and they did it. This tree just happened to be in the way and so it was uprooted.

Seeing the tree like that made me sad. Though I had no deep attachment to the tree, I was attached. I knew it as a specific tree, an individual. I thought of it as the “Y” tree because of the way it branches. This is my oldest photo of the tree, taken on 6 July 2007:

You can just barely see the “Y” tree on the right, just beyond the mouth of the tunnel, all but hidden among the foliage. You can see its form more distinctly in this photo, taken on 9 December 2007:

Here’s what it looked like on 7 October 2007:

There’s some graffiti on the rock wall just behind the tree:

If you look to the left, just below the center, you’ll see some white marking on the rocks. It says “Free Werds”:

I know nothing about Werds except that he’s a graffiti writer, and a good one, who’s respected among his peers. There’s a fair amount of his work in this area – in and around the Bergen Arches in Jersey city – and much of it has been left untouched in the three or four years I’ve been photographing local graffiti. That other writers do no go over Werds’ work is a sign of respect. As for why Werds was in prison, I heard it had something to do with drugs, which is plausible.