Street Magic @ Inside Outside Gallery 10/29

An art that everyone can do is hard to control. Street Magic, a multimedia show, lives up to its name by providing viewers the exhilaration of a graffiti artist outrunning the cops. This inspirational and dynamic show, which includes a short documentary “Public Discourse,” starts at 6PM on Fri 10/29. Make sure your costume (wearing one will get you in free) allows for a good peripheral view and listening through exhibit earphones.

Walking into the gallery a visitor immediately gravitates to a wall sized installation by the self-called Swoon of New York City. It’s a scene with life sized urban characters floating in their individual collections of possessions in front of a view through the windows of a subway car. The strap hanger crook of the arm echoes throughout the piece. Each character had a story because a viewer wonders, “why are the characters the way they are?”

“I usually don’t structure stories beforehand,” wrote Swoon in the placard next to this piece. She described doing a similar wall piece with an audience watching. “To see all these people quickly develop narratives (of the piece she was creating) really impressed me.”

Several video monitors showed different acts of street art in progress. In one the N.Y.C. street art team of Downey and Daris are in London checking out CCTV video cameras. Apparently not all CCTV cameras are created equal. Unlike the famed CCTV cameras that caught images of the London transport bombers last summer, D & D determined that a particularly ugly collection of seven cameras where all actually fake. The story, told through earphones, tells how they decided that the light colored camera boxes were visual pollution on the front of an older building. Apparently Darius is the cameraman shooting Downey working with ladder and screw gun and one-by-one removing the offending empty boxes while leaving the dark colored camera mounts still attached to the wall.

My incredulity gauge sends off warning signals on this one. Why would any property owner or authority put seven CCTV cameras so close together? What scene were they recording? We don’t see from the viewpoint of any of these cameras in this video. And like many acts of street art, this is a felony (at least in the U.S. it would be). Removing the camera enclosures is not legal, unless the artists installed them in the first place. The final scene is the “uninstaller for art” gathering the empty camera enclosures and removing them from the site.

The installation and use of a clandestine squatter’s loft built into the Central Station in Copenhagen Denmark made another video. To Baroque music with descriptions in on-screen captions, two artisans are shown finding the site, and when the station security wasn’t watching, building a free place to live while documenting the process.

The clandestine space provided room for sleeping two and a dining table. The pair who built the space put up portraits over the dining table of people who hang out around the station. They found a grated opening providing a view from their loft of foot to waist-level of the busy sidewalk outside. “You wake up in the morning here with the buzz of independence,” said one of the squatters of his rent-free confines.

The documentary “Public Discourse,” a film by Brad Downey will show several times on Oct. 29th. He spoke after a showing at the gallery on Oct. 1. The film is action-packed as well as thoughtful. Art in the 21st Century on PBS could use this kind of pick-me-up. The graffiti arts are diverse. One large elaborate outdoor wall painting states “In case of nuclear war, step inside.” A painter with a spray gun that can fire 20 feet produces a very large wall painting. Bolt cutters are used to access prime sites. A bunch of spray painters run from a patrol car.

Swoon and a small crew in a subway car swinging into action as soon as the doors close and their train starts moving. They switch off all the display cards in the car for cards with art, not advertisements. “We’re telling advertisers, “Hey, if you have something to say, that’s fine,” says Swoon. “But if anyone else has something to say, they can also say it…It’s about opening up the conversation.”

Some of the artists worked in broad daylight, sometimes in painter’s suits. Others didn’t even need that. A young woman artist from England, whose art is posting colorful pastoral scenes on urban walls, tells the camera, “I’m totally protected (from the authorities) by my demographic.” At the same time, Robert Moresy, who New York newspapers called in front-page headlines, “Graffiti King,” and “Million Dollar Vandal,” laments. “It sucks getting bagged.”

“It was the first time in my life that I made a lot of people laugh,” said another artist. “(Noam) Chomsky gave me language to articulate ideas,” said another. An artist that specializes in mounting small welded steel plate sculptures on street sign posts 10 feet above the sidewalk, mounted a boxing bag outside Don King’s office in Manhattan. Mr. King, a Cleveland boy, is said to have taken a few swipes at the bag.

“It is more powerful than advertising,” said Swoon. “Anyone can do it.” Viewing this show and listening to Mr. Downey speak was like being with my own kind. This writer once drove the getaway car for Cleveland’s own Regional Art Terrorists, whose RAT logo was patterned on RTA’s logo. That was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Inside Outside and Viva Libre, (which takes books, records and publications for sale on consignment), are at 2699 W. 14th Street in Tremont and can be reached at 216-623-8510, or via gallery director Erin Kray ekray@kent.edu or R.A. Washington feeqrastation@yahoo.com. Find the gallery on the Web at: http://www.fjkluth.com/inside.html More on Downey and Darius can be found at http://www.jenbekman.com/dariusdowney/. More on Swoon can be found at http://www.wrybread.com/gammablablog/featured/swoon.shtml

From Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Batdorff lbatdorffATadva.com (:divend:)