Lessons from 11 Spring

December 27, 2006 on 10:18 am | In global news | Comments Off on Lessons from 11 Spring

Silver blockbuster by DYM. Photos in this layer by ireallylovecake.

The “grand closing” at 11 Spring has come and gone, and countless layers of art have been born and buried. The consensus from those who made it to the event is overwhelmingly positive, and you can feel those good vibes all the way out here on the west coast.

The exterior walls saw a lot of action, especially during the days of the event itself, and people took thousands of photos. This is great news for Graffiti Archaeology! You’ll be seeing the results up here on the site very soon.

One moment everyone is talking about is when two writers from the DYM Crew came by early one morning and painted a giant silver blockbuster across the whole western wall, obliterating years’ worth of work underneath. This was controversial to say the least, but it was without a doubt a bold move on their part. Rather than discuss it here, I’d like to point out a couple of excellent blog posts that go into the details of what happened when, and why.

First is A Blog Soup‘s post, which is an amazing piece of citizen journalism: packed with videos, photos, first-person accounts from passersby and neighbors, and detailed comments from both HOST18 and Wooster Collective’s Marc Schiller. It’s worth reading all the way to the bottom to get a really three-dimensional picture of what happened.

The second is Jake Dobkin’s thoughtful analysis of how these walls ended up a complete mess, and why. His reference to the “tragedy of the commons” is spot on. For further discussion, see the comments on this photo, or the 11 Spring group on Flickr.