Massive (f), Second Layer Printed

Second color, re-developed & printed... mesh was again underdeveloped and seems impossible to be reclaimed, however i have a few aces up on my sleeve...

I wanted to print tomorrow the black layer... another delay...

Massive (e), Second Layer, Fail!

Yup FAIL!!! epic FAIL!!!.. plus it just started to rain...
2 reasons... mesh blocked for being underdeveloped, ink very liquid.
2 solutions a denser color and a water wash to unblock the mesh.

If they don't work, i'll have to re-develop which will result to a delay...

Massive (d), Second Layer

Second layer developed, unfortunately one tiny detail got underexposed (don't forget the size of this mama)...
The Devil however Hides in the Details... so while I prefere little detail differences from one printing to another (as a matter of fact from one print to another too, and in fact this is exactly the difference between handmade and digital), Zofos must take one of three decisions...
A) leave it as it is.
B) correct it by hand (the star, not the little lines in the triangles)...
C) clean it all over, re-mesh and redevelop...

Massive (c), Reclaim

Thoroughly cleaning the screen from leftover color (2nd cleaning - Nitro) and residual glue from the tape that served as color bleed protection.
Once the mesh gets reclaimed, residual color will be visible (trace) and will be cleaned once again.

GOTCHA!!!...reclamed... well allmost.. need a last one cleaning hand... but reclamed...

Massive (b), Printing

Printing #117
75% White, 25% Red.

More tape to avoid color bleed

#117 Printed

 Remnants of a day

Massive

For those of you who are accustomed to my work, "make-shift" is my core concept, both in art and applied arts.

After printing for a few other fellow artists, Sonke (etching), and a few Mapet (sticker A, sticker B) projects (between them the share stickers joint project with Lotek) and following my make-shift printhouse tradition, I accepted a bigger challenge... a 50cX70cm 3 color challenge that is... for ZOFOS.

Mind you this is a make-shift printhouse... and from 12cm stickers... to 35cm t-shirts... a 50X70cm 3 color posters without prior printhouse specifications can be quite a challenge.

Meet "Godzilla" my handmade screen frame made for the occasion... 64,5cm X 91cm (outside), inside 58,5cm X 85cm... Double Bolted!!

Cost so far:
• 3m semi-planed wood = 5 euro
• 95X70cm Mesh = 25 euro
• Bolts & screws ≈ 5 euro

What i woulde have done differently:
Maybe i should have choosen a well planed wood insead of a semi-planed one, it would make tape easier to stick on later when i'll need to stop corners from color bleeding... or i should have varnished it before putting it together.

Separations and Transparencies:
Colors separated, transparencies ready to print... in each transparency 1pt of stroke added for color trapping. Also 8 point stars added to serve as registration marks.

Transparencies:
Cost + 3.20 Euro, maybe i'll print a new transparency for the Black color since this one seems chocked in the wave lines.

Screen:
Ready to print the first colour.

Greeks excluded

My big, fat, hairy, NON-GREEK, Greek crisis street art.

The Athens School of Fine Arts (ASKT), organizes a GREEK-CRISIS Street art... thing... from which Greek artivists are of course excluded.

No one invited us, and I wouldn't even bother to comment, however i feel compelled to do so after reading a School of Fine Arts comment to newspaper TO BHMA, which stated that Greeks were excluded due to the "dubious artistic value" of Greek street art.

ASKT's need to control and dictate "imported culture" to its "inferior greek citizens", once again shows why it never leads and always follows... and it doesn't come as a surprise.

A sorrofull salute to fellow foreign street artist that are being used as a free speech and polyphony alibi.

TRANSLATION: "The initiative also aims to highlight the differencebetween street artists who perform social criticism on walls and buildings with works that are branded and that are instantly recognizable for their personal character, as opposed to the anarchy of anonymous complaints with graffiti, which most often pollute public spaces with personal desires with dubious to none artistic value".

Mapet, anti-nazi seagull

Mapet's anti-nazi seagull, that featured on stickers and the "Wake Up Call" greek politic street art documentary by Kostas Kallergis, on the YRE anti-nazi camping poster.

23 Ιουνίου 2013

Ανήμερα της μεγαλύτερης σελήνης της χρονιάς -σώμα ουράνιο συνυφασμένο και με την μητρότητα- αποφάσισα να γράψω για τη μάνα μου.
Την άλλη, την πολιτιστική.

Εκείνης που για να νοιώσουμε την έ(κ)λειψη της, έπρεπε να πεθάνει.

Μετά το "μαύρο", παραπέτασμα της απώλειας, οι μπάρες οι πολύχρωμες, σκόπιμη απόσπαση από το πένθος.
"Αρoν-άρoν", στο σπίτι μας, μιά άλλη... μιά μητριά.

"Συνετή" αυτή... Α!.. και νοικοκοιρά!
Αποδεκτή και απ'αυτούς που χαρήκαν τον θάνατο της "αμαρτωλής".

Για το αύριο φοβάμαι, μέσα από το Ιστορικό Αρχείο της ΕΡΤ το κοινό μας παρελθόν είναι δεδομένο.

Για εκείνο το "αύριο" που ξεκίνησε την Τρίτη (11 Ιουνίου 2013) και ξανοίγεται μπροστά μας...
Ποιός θα μας σταθεί σε αυτό;
Ποιος θα μας καταλάβει;
Ποιός θα μας πονέσει;
Ποιός θα μας μαλώσει πριν μας αγκαλιάσει και πάλι;
...τέλος, ποιός θα το καταγράψει; Πως;

Γράφω απόψε για τη μάνα μου,
και γράφω με τη βαθιά πεποίθηση πως ακόμα και η χειρότερη γυναίκα,
δεν μπορεί παρά να είναι η καλύτερη μάνα για τα παιδιά της.

ΑΝΑΜΕΤΑΔΟΣΗ ΕΡΤ

The electricity bill terrorism

New sticker, Terrorism is the Electricity bill...

A bill much larger than our monthly pay... not by consuption but by taxing, illegal taxing since do not take in consideration people's ability to pay them... hence a sure method to baptise people "indebted" and blakmail them.

Behind these fences...

New Stickers!

Greek Parliament fences stickers.

Goverments that (like the greek one) that rule behind fences,
make the role they play against the will of their society and people, more than obvious.

A SOS (inverted flag) signal from a country kept captive by its rulers.

Collaboration

The screen of the MOIRASOU "share" sticker, originally a joint Lotek & Mapet stencil project. Refurbished and printed after they called me on board.Still you can note on my screen, shades of an older refurbished Mapet stencil idea screen printed sticker.

Studienkolleg zu Berlin...

Hey,

I found your work on the internet and read some articles about you and liked it quite a lot. My name is Ann-Sophie and I am from Germany. I am doing research on Urban Art as a means of protest at the moment. I am currently participating in a project called Studienkolleg zu Berlin. Within the framework of this project we work in small teams composed of six students from across Europe on societal questions in Europe. The research topic of my group is Street Art as a form of political protest - the creative conquest of public space?

We want to examine the urban art scene in several countries and find out what strives street artists to chose the street as the scenery to express themselves. We are also interested in whether street art permits conclusions about political developments or perhaps even reveals trends and similarities or differences between the different countries. At the end of our investigation we will present our results in form of an exhibition and in a written way as a publication.

We will be in Athens from March 21 till 26 and would very much like to meet you to get to know more about your work.

It would be great to hear from you...

Best regards, Ann-Sophie

Hi, Ann-Sophie

Thank you for your kind words,
unfortunately I will disappoint you by refusing your call.

Please understand that maintaining a graffiti police-force while
subsidize students to learn about it in foreign countries is so
oxymoron that embarks to stupidity. I really wonder how this could
possibly be missed by your organizers...
Further more... we're expected to act as their "Petri dish"? For what? Safe in-vitro observation?

If Germany needs or wants to understand something, it might as well
let it develop and flourish instead of oppressing and haunt it. You
lose some you win some... that's life... win/win attitudes/policies
shouldn't neither be tolerated nor encouraged. Plus any "trend"
develops differently from space to space, and expresses different
needs.

Characters in comedy and drama in ancient Rome, dear Ann-Sophie, had always been "foreigners"... slaves... teachers... merchants... always foreigners, degrading the "self correction mechanism" of these genres to "self-accommodation"... and it's only by means of narcissism and self accommodation that a society chooses to leave it's "parent/child", "citizen to citizen", "public/private" and "freedom of speech/unsettling concepts" relations and matters to be regulated by the armed hand of police.

I deeply wish you a life of freedom of speech rather than a life of seeking it in foreign lands.

Truly yours
Absent. 

Dear you, Absent,

thank you for your answer, it shows at least that you spent some time on thinking about my request.

I dont know if I can still convince you to meet us, I guess not, but I feel the need to answer, since your view on our group seems to me a little black/white.

1.) We are doing this project mainly out of curiosity. We are six young people from Romania, Macedonia, Ukraine, Austria and Germany so actually Germany is the country least represented. But that doesnt matter so much since we are not traveling as ambassdors of our countries or as representatives of government policies, but as individual beings that want to know something about how people deal with dissatisfaction and crisis (and I am not speaking of the euro crisis,but of crisis in the very basic meaning of the word) in an unconventional way. 

2.) Doesnt every country maintain something like a graffiti police force or at least a unit which tries to eliminate it? And isnt that also a reason why street artists of however you wanna call people expressing themselves on the streets actually choose the streets to display their thoughts and ideas? Isnt the official chasing of street art what makes the art subversive? Isnt that why you do not go to galeries to exhibit your work? Because that way you simpathize with the people showing their discontent on the streets as well by demonstrating?

3.) We are not subsidized to "learn" about street art or graffiti or sent by any organizers. We chose the topic ourselves out of interest and curiosity. No one controls our "output" or if there is an output at all. All the efforts to organize our trip, places to sleep at (no, we cannot afford a hotel, we couchsurf), bus or hitchhiking opportunities, research about the history and current situations in the countries we travel to and so on are not paid for by anyone, they are only paid in impressions that we can take home and learn from.

4.) We are not seeking anything else in foreign lands than better understanding. We are not going there with pre-maid ideas or schemes, but with an interest in being taught.

I really hope that your answer was only inspired by how I formulated my request and not by the simple fact that my nationality on paper is German. Because how much does a nationality actually tell about a person, his/her liffe, ideals, hopes, desires, interest etc.?

I am still up for meeting you not to do an "interview", but to get to know you and your opinions. 

Ann-Sophie

 

Thank you, again, for your e-mail.

I'm sorry that my response didn't meet your expectations.
I assure you however that the rejection of your request is far from personal.

Absent

athensville - The Wake Up Call

The Wake Up Call documentary on Athensville.

Corriere della sera - The Wake Up Call

Corriere della sera (blogs), relay.

The Wake up call, Cinema Mag relay

The Wake Up Call feature in CINEMA mag.

Silence is Violence, Brussels Expo

Pictures from Silence is Violence in Brussels, more on Newsville.