BSA Images Of The Week: 09.22.24

Welcome to BSA Images of the Week and welcome to Fall, which officially arrived this morning in New York and the Northern Hemisphere. Leaves are turning yellow, corduroy and wool turtlenecks are prematurely donned, kisses are stolen beneath bleachers at football games, and foundational ideas for Halloween costumes are floated. The opposite situation is happening south of the Equator. In Australia this week, they’ll be hosting one of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest floral festivals, Floriade in Canberra, while in Argentina, students will be celebrating Día de la Primavera and “Student’s Day” with picnics and outdoor gatherings to mark the start of spring. In all cities north and south, there will be artists and vandals spraying illegally in the margins and neglected areas, where aerosol expression runs wildly.

This week, we’re diving into a new book from one of the few brilliant graffiti scholars out there—Rafael Schacter. You might remember him from his global street art compendium, the curated show ‘Mapping the City’ at Somerset House in London (yes, the one that included people like Brad Downey, Swoon, and Eltono), or even his early work at the Tate back in ’08 with artists on the façade of the museum like Faile, Blu, and Os Gemeos. His latest book, Monumental Graffiti: Tracing Public Art and Resistance in the City (MIT Press), just landed on our doorstep. We’re eyeing it with both curiosity and caution as he’s making some bold connections between monuments and graffiti—connections that are peculiar on their face. He’s digging into a secondary or even third-tier definition of ‘monument,’ so who knows, it might all come together in the end. But this is the same guy who gave us ‘intramural’ graffiti about a decade ago… and, that term hasn’t hit the streets, as it were.

Re: intramural – In his curatorial work Schacter sometimes argues that street art occupies a unique space that is neither fully embraced by institutional frameworks (like museums and galleries, the “inside”) nor entirely outside them (like illegal, unsanctioned art in public spaces, the “outside”). Intramural, extramural. Makes total sense. But aside with the confusion caused by the word ‘mural’ buried inside it, there is perhaps a ‘branding’ problem with the word here in the US. It sounds too much like ‘intramural sports,’ which were always introduced at grade school for both boys and girls to play together to foster team-building skills – right around the age when girls typically think boys are ‘gross,’ and boys think girls are ‘weird.’  So it feels awkward and frightful! I feel like my voice is cracking and I’m growing a very light mustache when I hear it. Let’s see how this graffiti/monument thing works out. If anyone can do it, Rafael can!

And here we go boldly into the streets of New York and Berlin this week with new extramural stuff from: Judith Supine, Crash, 1UP Crew, Homesick, Nespoon, Hera, Phetus, Atomik, Qzar, Wild West, and Drew Kane.