progresswear/design

Messages from the Streets.
I discovered these amazing street graphics via the MySpace page of a young woman passionately committed to social justice and change. It's a very deep site as MySpace pages go, produced with zealous fervor. From it I found this powerful section on the yet to be completed americansarebrainwashed.com site. One of the best repositories of political and protest street art I've yet to encounter.

In an age of digital mediocrity in communications it's refreshing and hopeful to see how much the human hand is at work here. From the scrawled to the stenciled, the scratched and the posted brilliant, clever and poignant statements abound.

"One Way" signs become "One Day" signs, "Bombs Away" scrawled on a car window's American flag sticker, "HELLO my name is Fuck War." A few bumper stickers and Progresswear like commercially available messages are to be found, but the great majority are the handiwork of a single brave and angry individual.

I have mixed feelings when it involves permanent defacement of property, private or public. I'd always broken with my art school friends over the graffiti question. Yet most graffiti is ego driven and self centered. Look at me, I can write my name real big. These are public service messages. And often the only form in which the majority of its viewers will ever see them. Public statements about the government are as old as Pompeii. Visit any European capitol, even during the leaner years of world catastrophe, and comments and cries about the state of the people vs. the power abound.