To Be Seen
by Alice Arnold, Director
First Run / Icarus Films, Brooklyn NY,
2005
VHS, 30 mins., col.
Sales (Video-DVD), $225; rental (Video-DVD),
$75
Distributors website: http://www.frif.com.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens
Department of Art, University of Northern
Iowa
ballast@netins.net
Lots of people will find this documentary
both invigorating and inspiring while
others will find it a challenge to watch.
Admittedly well edited, it is a fast-paced,
reasonably interesting look at graffiti,
stenciling, and other varieties of Street
Art (as distinct from spontaneous "street
art"), applied all over city walls, not
by the destitute, the homeless or neighborhood
gangs, but (judging from examples shown)
by smart, (white) aspiring Artists who
come from upper middle class backgrounds.
The results are faux "expressions" in
architectural settings (vernacular or
haute couture), in a way that is
no less dismaying than the ubiquitous
ruin of beautiful skin by ineptly drawnand
dumbtattoos.
From the film's interviews (ennobled by
pronouncements by university professors,
whose pristine suburban houses have surely
not been targeted by graffiti artists),
we learn that Street Art practitioners
may consider their work an admirable way
to subvert the billboards, posters, stickers,
and other branding strategies used by
profit hungry commercial advertisers.
Never mind that these same Artists most
likely financed their schooling with the
income that their parents made as executives
in those same corporations or that they
themselves are exactly "dressed down"
in the latest hat backwards tradition,
with corporate logos all over their clothes.
To the film's credit, it does admit that
the filthy Capitalists who inundate current
society with "cool" merchandise (like
nifty, crack-revealing jeans, mesmerizing
disc players, and distracting cell phones)
increasingly use Street Art and graffiti
(even kid-distributed street stickers)
in its advertising campaigns. They also
come close to admitting that Art (the
myth-based line of commodities sold in
art galleries and promoted in Art schools,
magazines, and films about sacrosanct
individuality, such as this one) is also
largely governed by profit making. Unbelievably,
when accused of vandalism, these Artists
explain that their heartfelt intent is
to "take back the streets," to restore
public territory to "public" (meaning
their own) control. In the process, they
accomplish just the opposite, so that
We the People are left to endure two pervasive
sources of idiocyone of whom uses
the other as its test canary for new marketing
strategies.
(Reprinted by permission from Ballast
Quarterly Review, Volume 21 Number
2, Winter 2005-2006.)