WhATtf IS
pasteUp?
(first attempt to justify this noble technique with a couple of fat words I've recently learned.).
Don't take paste up too serious, nor too far. Neograffiti or post-graffiti are two words that sound just fine quite for anything related to visual arts, they''ve been around for a while though. Even contemporary art. Even Art. The history of urban arts is rich and complex and paste up is one of their younger brothers,... or maybe not. Contemporary to the dawn of graffiti, back in the 70's Jenny Holzer stepped ahead from the poster conventions and posted some concept poster art works ("truisms"). Way before that, the industrial poster tradition (just as good as art can be intended) has always been a visual tool, for many purposes, but most importantly as a social growth element more than just propaganda or advertising.
The market (ergo their actors) determine today's art as a particular way of life; in this world, where everything happens according to discord and necessity, Justice looks like an irresolvable fight, and struggle remains, surprisingly, as some kind of order. Wait,.. where am I going here... Anyway, who on earth would be waisting a second reading even this far. Who cares, let's get back to the subject. Calling paste up neograffiti or poster art just looks inaccurate, but suits the quick explanation. Always doxa vs episteme, of course, or how couldn't books be subjected to the readers's glasses.
Paste up stands for visual art from multiple sides. It's a mind stirring tool, a firewall for streetart's gentrification issues, a memento mori, a mainstream and convention antidote, an intimately funny refresh for the viewer, a situationist blow, a performance of ethical testing, a down-to-earth thing, and whatnot... Last but not least, it''s happiness and communication, two concepts that should walk hand to hand more often.
ADDENDUM
FRANÇAIS
ESPAÑOL
STICK IT UNBIASED
COLLER SANS S'ATTACHER
PEGAR CON DESAPEGO
“After years of working in the image field, being able to create unsupervised stuff to frame in a public space seemed to me a transcendent act, given the ephemeral nature of pasteUp. Yet this technique is not nihilist, but vitalist! Independent from conventional values, this technique accepts its existence as "Amor Fati" (embracing destiny as useful and necessary), a lend that points out the idea of the ephemeral as truer, in front of the mirages of illusory materialism. In opposition to the misleading concept of an unidirectional historicist progress, pasteUp embraces the idea of Eternal Return as a source of artistic expression. For me it's Ultra-art then; It is created then undone, and others will come, like mandalas, ice statues, even a song; If the only thing that does not change is that everything changes, the ever-changing pasteUp is therefore one of the truest techniques I have ever known. This may sound as a joke but it displays a deeper understanding; I guess that's why I embrace it with devotion, because it is, personally, the most real and fulfilling. Apparently now I'm no street artist, but a conceptual artist, whatever that means..."
ETERNO RETORNO EN LA FILOSOFÍA DE LA EXPRESIÓN
La relación entre expresión e inmedatez queda ilustrada por la concepción del eterno retorno de cosas iguales. En efecto, si un punto de inmediatez se expresara en una cadena determinada y única, irrepetible, de expresiones, no cabría sino atribuir metafísicamente una voluntad a la inmediatez, lo que es absurdo. ¿Por qué una cadena expresiva dada debería intervenir precisamente en un momento determinado y no en otro? ¿Cómo se explicará el vínculo en el tiempo, es decir en la apariencia, entre la que está fuera de la aparienca y las series expresivas? ¿Porque* (*y no por qué) entonces la inmediatez "quiere" tal expresión? Pero la expresión no es sino la repercusión, el espejo, cuyas imágenes -como dice Plotino < se arrojan en el tiempo >, de algo que está fuera del tiempo, que no se mueve no está quieto, que no quiere. Por ello, la naturaleza de la expresión es "repetirse" eternamente (repetirse significa expresarse con continuidad en el tiempo), ya que el tiempo en su conjunto -pero a través de "determinadas" series expresivas- expresa la esfera de las inmediateces que siempre están ahí.
La expresión no puede ser continuamente nueva, es decir constituir una serie indefinida, ya que la inmediatez se revela precisamente por medio de algo determinado. Así el campo de las expresiones determinadas que se manifiestan a través del tiempo en su conjunto -abierto e indefindo- requiere en verdad el eterno retorno.
Giorgio Colli
stuff
