graffiti blocks the street

  

Sunday morning found Mesha and me crawling groggily out of bed to stare at this large stack of cardboard cartons we had managed to scrounge and find in a small go-down in Sheshadripuram over the previous week. We wanted to paint out the logos that were scattered all over the boxes and test whether the paints we had would hold, show and behave. This exercise turned out to be more fun than I expected actually. Ended up with a bunch of my cousins, a sibling and one 3-and -something-year-old niece happily dipping into the paint tubs and ‘helping’ out. Net result - painted boxes + very colourful balcony.

By 3pm we set out to block the streets. My little gray Indica could barely hold all the nonsense we had in there. Cartons, easels, paint, buckets, banners, stones (picked off the roads to hold down the cartons), cameras, magazines, newspapers…ahhh you name it! The car was a veritable A-Z supply store.

Rendezvous point at brigade road found us off-loading at superhuman pace and with some volunteers and a very curious crowd we had our wall up ten past 4. Yes, yes, we actually pulled it off!!!

From free Tibet to Why No Parking...
all kinds of gripes and gratitude were splattered on our wall pretty soon. I‘m just amazed at the reaction we get every time we do our street Acts. After some momentary hesitation, most people just get right in and get totally involved with painting,
writing , sticking .

This free-form graffiti wall really worked out. We’ll just put up a small bulletin saying that we’re painting and everyone can come join us we plotted while stuck in traffic that day. No more cajoling and canvassing…let see how it plays itself out. If people see that we are having fun, it shouldn’t take them too much to want to join in right? Worked like a charm. Tons of people walked up to us and asked if they could dip in. yes yes, please do…that only is the idea.
More and more I love these Sundays!

Hey, one BIG thank-you to all the ppl who came out there and graffitied with us! One special mention to Vasundhara Das for coming out there to support us :) Some regular faces that we are fully happy to see - Anand, Dawood, Tomek, Sandeep
If i've left out any names please just comment or email in

Photographs by Saurabh. Many, many thanks da!

See you all next Sunday then. 4pm. brig rd....till then, post in your thoughts by SMSing to our standingonfish blog
read side column for more info >>

sculpture? painting? graffiti? sunday on-the-street again

wokay. we had a super great time last sunday painting with everyone on the streets, so this time we decided to get more of that while remaining true to our adventurous selves...we are going to be experimenting with sculpture, collage-making, graffiti...you name it.

jusht come off. bring anything you'd like to see up on a wall - colour, clippings, thoughts, words.

4pm sharp. Brigade road - residency road intersection. sunday, the 26th of nov.

we picked the time. we picked the place. now tic tic tic tic tic tic...

O and if you haven't already, please sign up for our newsletter so we can email you our POA every time we Act on the streets >>

45 meters of painting on the pavement

 

9am Sunday morning, and it seemed many of our painter friends were a bit skittish about painting in public - they were not performing artists they said. This was going to be a tricky one...and the bigger Q: how do we get the people in the crowd to participate?

Over dosas at my parents place an hour later Mesha struck gold! Indian Express carried on its front page a picture of kids in Germany painting the longest canvas. Our first Act on St.Marks a month or so back, we had done something similar except with just 5 ppl. So 2 and 2 together we made 1000!

A dash to Art Materials in Kumara Park to get some running length of white paper, some brushes, borrowed easels, hunt for buckets and basins, all the paints that either of us owned, and we were set...but the rain god was upset it seemed.
3 pm found the two of us sitting on the portico of Motas while it rained down on us. We figured that even if was going to pour, we'd still just put up our easels and paint...more statement that!
3:15 pm the rains stopped. Up went the banners. Out came our art goodies. Jo brought in the water, Vibin and Abi helped us roll out the paper, Smitha, Ashish set up the easels, Udai and Saurabh got out their cameras...

4 pm sharp we were ready, set, go!

The crowds totally got into the act. Loved the way so many people just picked up the brushes, or dipped in their hands and wrote, drew, marked the paper. And the kids were adorable…kumar and his sister, diya and keya - fully sweet.

So now we have about 45 meters of art created by the people on the streets. And all kinds of ideas come to mind. We can make an animation short, we could use the paper to create an interesting sculpture. it would be great to have it back on the street as a public installation someday - a community graffiti installation piece. hmmmm...

Special thanks to the guys who helped us paint-on-the-street:
Vibin Nair
Abhijeet S Dev
Johanna Barretto
Smitha
Ashish S
Dawood
Udai Singh Pawar - Video
Saurabh - Photos

Fully thanks you who came inspite of the dark clouds:
Jitu
The Joys - Joseph, Chandana, Diya and Keya
Anand Bora
Roshini Gyara
Veda
Archana Handa
Manoj V
George Paul
Pramod

SOF Paint-on-the-street

Sunday coming up and this time we have a very happy plan. Show up 4pm on brigade road (outside Mota Arcade). We’ll have some easels and acrylic paints set up. Those who would like to paint can come forward and start painting. Simple right!
And everyone who comes there can be part of this act by simply bringing a sketch book and writing, scribbling, drawing in them for that half hour.
The sketch book is important guys. It's our creative way to show that we care about our art, our streets and that there are simple, artistic ways we can speak out!

Our message :
Art on the streets. Public awareness on creative forms of self-expression. Questioning our urban planners and city authorities on why there are no public spaces for such activities.

The SOF project :
We collect people's reactions, thoughts, feelings, drawings, paintings, et al, on the standingonfish blog. So that one fine day these can be displayed, published projected onto the streets from where they came. And yes people can SMS and post instantly to our blog.

Post your comments here or get in touch with us to share ideas, ask q's and become an active part of SOFTact by writing to standingonfish[at]hotmail.com

Music-on-the-street: the madness has begun!

the first of the series of 6 sundays of went off really well you guys! lots of very, very happy crowd and truck loads of enthu. the music boys were amazing!!

mesha and i started off around 2pm by looking at the street. it was hot, we were trying to figure out which spot to pick to have the SOF act. finally we chose a little patch of pavement just outside of Mota Arcade on Brigade Road and started to put up the banner.

3:45 and we were set. the instruments were on the street. the banners were up. the passers-by were getting curious...we even got a few thinking we were hawking the instruments!

4pm and on the dot - abhi walked over to the mat, picked up a guitar and began strumming. almost immediately the rest of the lounge piranha boys - george, kamal, rohan and prevez got into the scene. passers-by were pausing. some more music enthusiasts - anandan, natraj, micheal, montrey, pavan and a few others walked onto the mat, picked up their instruments and pretty soon a full on jam with djembes, dijareedoos, dhols and guitars kicked in.

It was SUPERRRRR! half an hour of the best kind of madness. and yep we got in a huge crowd of people who were pretty happy to be there.

So who is up for the next one? Any guesses on what its going to be all about? find out i say, find out...

SOF Jam-on-the-Street with Lounge Piranha - Today!

yep that's right! we are going live! the lounge piranha boys will kick-off the 6 sunday's in a row marathon to take our blog-on-the-street art project out there.
so be there boys and girls, music with us from 4pm to 4:30pm. the brigade road - residency road (outside Mota Arcade) intersection, bangalore, india - is where its at.
see you and keep watching this space for yummy pictures of all that you missed out on if you don't make it :)

Cards4U people publish SOF Street Act teaser postcards!!

Great news! The Cards4U guys have published some 10,000 postcards for the SOF Project and have pushed them out through their distribution network to cafes, pubs and restaurants in delhi, bangalore, chennai, mumbai and calcutta. so look out for those cards and get your own copy of these collectibles...