Digital Young

Talking in a previous post about stencils and explaining three stencils which are drawn on a wall in the old center of Bucharest, I thought to show you three more. These ones are everywhere on the street and made me thinking which is the difference between graffiti and stencils.

At their origins, both graffiti & stencils appeared with the same function: rebellion, an act of opposition face to a majority system or a majority perception. Both forms were practiced by minority, even marginal social categories. This powerful social function survived until today, but its purpose and object of “irony” are changed.

Where is the aesthetic function coming from? Stencils and the technique which is practiced to make them have their own historicity: even from prehistorical times, stencils have been done on cave walls. “A stencil is a template used to draw or paint identical letters, symbols, shapes, or patterns every time it is used. Stencil technique in visual art is also referred to as pochoir. Stencils are formed by removing sections from template material in the form of text or an image. This creates what is essentially a physical negative. The template can then be used to create impressions of the stenciled image, by applying pigment on the surface of the template and through the removed sections, leaving a reproduction of the stencil on the underlying surface. Aerosol or painting stencils must remain contiguous after the image is removed, in order for the template to remain functional. Sections of the remaining template which are isolated inside removed parts of the image are called islands. All islands must be connected to other parts of the template with bridges, or additional sections of narrow template material which are not removed.” (source: Wikipedia).

I don’t think I can be even clearer than that. They said it pretty well. After cave walls, stencils transgressed to books, to typographic support, and became book illustrations. Because their inscription on this type of support, aesthetic function was consolidated.

Stencil graffiti is the type that I would like to talk about. I think it encrypts the voice of a specific space, the cultural representations. I mean, you go in Barcelona and you will find certain texts and messages on walls that you, as a tourist, don’t understand at all. The same thing with the previous stencil. You might think: what’s up with Chuck Norris and why is he so important for people to put his name on a wall?

So, here’s the first characteristic of a stencil: it communicates irony. And this irony refers to characters that are well embedded in life of that space. For instance, for those who don’t know, after the Revolution (you know, it’s that revolution against communism after which Ceausescu was killed and no longer Romania’s president), a fast and really scary democratization started. Things from foreign country came to ours; from USA, first came crappy action movies whose heroes were (in this order): Jean-Claude Van Damme (Yes, mussels in Brussels), Arnold Schwarzenegger and, of course, Chuck Norris. A young generation grew up with these movies, seeing them to a VCR.

After these debut years, these movies were all over Romanian commercial channels; PRO TV is well known for its success in buying these crappy movies. Of course, the public changed; they didn’t have anymore the hungry youngsters for everything that came from Western countries, but youngsters with knowledge and critical spirit, able to differentiate what was good and what was not. So, Chuck Norris became the funny character representing this movie genre.

Still about teens in Buzau. Maybe I bother you talking and talking about these guys, but I was really impressed by these teens. You might say that it is something really normal for teens to express themselves through these art forms: dance, graffiti or manga. But I will tell you that in this case it is not so normal after all. These kids have no source where to see these things or to learn how to do these things besides Internet. They also do not have places to express them. They also don’t have other local crews or groups to socialize with or to learn from. So, my question is: how do they do it? Isn’t this a legitimate question?

From these break dancers, I found out that there are teens for whom break dance is not the only art form for expression. It’s like they are a melting pot of urban art forms. Ionut Alexandru (aka Saga), 16 years, is a break dancer, a graffer, an extreme biker, an illegal car driver and he also does volunteering in a ONG. So…how does he deal with all these?

Graffiti sketches…

Graffiti on walls:

And…

Madalina, 16 years, she’s also a multi-functional-maker urban stylist. She’s more into graphics and manga, but she also does graffiti. Here are some of her works.

Manga:

She’s so incredibly talented, so I really wanted to show you what she does and how she does. Both of them, Ionut & Madalina, are witty, smart, interesting and do so many things that make a part of their everyday life. They identify themselves with every drawing, graffiti, or dance that they do. I liked them a lot, I only hope that this incredible talent do not waste and just transform into different art forms.

Ifrim, Cheeta, Alfred, Solo, Mono, Ionut, Venom, Tzaky, Electro, Vladissimo, Tazz, Adriana & Piciu are Crazy Style Crew.

They are really extraordinary. High school kids, they are from Buzau. Buzau is a capital of a departement in Romania, at 2 hours from Bucharest. It’s a very nice town, and here I found these interesting teens.

They are a crew of break dance. I found them rehearsing at Youth Center because they don’t have another place for rehearsals, besides, of course, the park. Starting to talk to them, I found out more about break dance in general and what that means for them.

I was astonished that these youngsters, not having any local contact with urban culture, they make it and create it. They are connected to a global culture and they learn about it from other sources than local ones. For instance, about break dance, it was really chocking for me to see that they wanted to do break dance and no other thing (like a traditional dance or other dance) and they ways that they learned figures and elements from. For instance, they have sites like www.3w.style2ouf.com, www.100pou1000.com or www.breakersmove.com, where they download movies from and try to reproduce them.

As history of their crew, they are now formed from the ex-crew (Icstrim) and the junior one, MDC. They exist for about 2 years, but the ones that formed initially the group left Buzau and came to Bucharest, as students. Therefore they were replaced by juniors.

Talking to them about what break dance means for them, they told me that it is a sport for them and not a dance. And this is my first observation; if outsiders perceive this thing as a dance, insiders see it as a sport. And they told me why: continuous rehearsals (2 or 3 hours by day, at Youth Center or in the park, at Foisor), discipline (in time, way of moving), body transformation (more mobile, more flexible).

Well, when they do these kind of thgs, I start to think that they’re right.

Starting to talk about break dance, they initiated me in their know-how; so, there are styles like footwork, top rock and personal style. Inside of their group, they form themselves in time on different positions: powermover (force elements), tricker (flexible elements), styler (legs elements), abstracts (combining different elements). So, a break dancer has to have some physical characteristics in order to perform, like flexibility, but there are other that, they say, can be obtained in time: balance, force, agility, tenacity, imagination and creativity. The last two are of course mental characteristics. And, as Ionut told me, you cannot exist without them. Even if you’re a good performer and you do well your elements, if you don’t prove creativity, you’re nothing.

A powermover.

And a styler:

But, as they told me, each one of them can have different positions, so one can be a tricker and a styler, which is the case of the boy from the anterior picture. All you have to have, “is to catch the beat. If you have the beat, there won’t be any problem”.

The know-how and all these elements are learned totally informal; they teach each other, they transmit the knowledge from the big ones (seniors) to younger ones (juniors). They also learn the elements from videos that they find on specialized web sites. They do a lot of rehearsals and they are extremely determined. For instance, they dance in clubs, discos and they already have two participations at national competitions. Performing.

Audience reactions.

And again performing.

This sport gives them a specific life style. They improve physically but also mentally (in terms of discipline). Even if their parents are against their children’s involvement (as they say that “this dance is for street people”), teens don’t care very much about it. A teen told me that his parents changed their opinion when they saw articles in local press and reports on local media about their child’s performance.

In relationship to their peers, the crew is highly seen and they have a lot of apprentices who stay in line in order to be accepted in the crew. For example, there were two girls who wanted to be in the crew, but they had to learn first basic elements. Their learning practices and appropriating elements that they see on Youtube are done in an informal and creative way. In the sense that they appropriate these elements (on the hard way, in terms of time and physical effort) in a very creative and imaginative manner; they don’t imitate, they create personal styles in function of their physical and imaginative capabilities. Through continuous exercise, they master elements but after that it’s on them how to combine them and what to express through body elements.