For those living in Sao Paulo it is worthwhile to take a closer look on the walls, buildings and streets this weekend. 30 graffiteiros will go off on four corners of the city as a celebration to a local Graffiti day.

Sao Paulo, is widely recognised as amongst the most lively scenes in the world for graffiteiros. The language of the tags or pixacao is a language of its own, an ad-hoc language looking like a mixture of Japanese and Russian. It dates back to the early 1980:ies and can be seen more or less all over the city. Many books have been written and a lot of research made on the pixacao and graffiti scene in Sao Paulo. As with most tags it has a lot to do with marking your territory and manifesting yourself politically (and often violently). But if taggers in Europe take risks climbing on train stations and on house roofs, their colleagues in Sao Paulo can sometimes tagg entire buildings of 20 floors. Buildings covered from top to bottom with tags might look depressive or even violent in their black colour on grey surface, but for researchers and taggers it is documents of history. Without understanding the signs I can only stay astonished on the sight of the extraordinary work that has been done to write on public and private buildings.

Graffiti in Sao Paulo is much more elaborate than the pixacao. On most streets outside the financial district you can walk around like in a gallery, impressed by the sophistication, the mixture of colours, techniques, influences and messages in the streetart. Neighborhood associations even hire graffiteiros to paint on walls of their street. In some neighborhoods like Vila Madalena it is such a rich graffiti landscape, with an abundance of professional artists, that walls are repaint every two months by different artists with new motives. It is far from the origins of the rebel art movement that it started off being, but it keeps its political messages clear.

Graffiti is and always will be debated for it’s very grounds. Some people see it as aggressions on private or public property, a marginalised movement for marginalised people. Others appreciates it as avant garde, an aggressive statement on the closed gallery world. Still others considers the graffiti movements as an underground force against the privatization and branding of public space. This last argument is not valid however for the city of São Paulo, since all illegal publicity signs (meaning basically everyone) was removed a little more than a year ago, on order from the governor. The result is that the public space got grayer but the graffiti paintings got more powerful, as they stood out with their colourful expressions.

This week is also a celebration to one of the first graffiti artists in Sao Paulo, Rui Amaral. For those who speak Portuguese, the leftist Vermelho newspaper has an article on Rui Amaral this week, as he had a vernissage on some of his work. The article also points out the locations, where graffiti artists will be painting this weekend.

Todos os festivais deveriam passar esta ideia: mundo, ambiente, respeito.

Foi uma experiência inédita, assistir a um show onde se passa a mensagem de respeito pelo mundo. As pessoas 50 mil pessoas presentes cumpriram a ideia e no final, nem uma beata estava no chão, nem um copo de cerveja… nada, e tudo, mas mesmo tudo estava limpo. Após um mês, ainda penso e actuo ”ecologicamente”.

Fim-de-semana super divertido na companhia do Tiago Borges, grande abraço!

talamasca

Na Xxxperience, com o Veiga e Talamasca.

Atenção!!! Tenho pelo no peito, mas com 35 graus tive de tirar – a festa merecia!