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.

It’s no newsflash tthat children often prove a high creativity in re-doing stuff, in transforming things that we are ready to throw away. Hotnews (www.hotnews.ro), one of the most ranked news site in Romania, did a project in collaboration with various social actors, in order to promote ecology and creativity. The link between those two? Trash.

So, they started a contest for a wide and large public to send their creations. Creations which had to have as raw material various objects that we would consider to be trash. See what came up of this. What to do with water empty bottles:

This little robot won public’s prize. And why throwing your daily newspaper when you could just make a…little horse?

Next objects really got my attention because they are variations of how to use in a creative way bottles caps:

wine bottle caps.. Murfatlar, I guess…

Refreshements bottles caps… Coca-Cola, Pepsi…

Beer bottle caps…

And what if you’re a girl and your boyfriend is a computer maniac who is making, decomposing and recomposing computers? Well, just use the caps that remain from many keyboards making a…

Yes, a BAG! Ingenious, no?

And just to think that Fanta pets are really…useless…think again…

And now…(you can hear drums)…ta ta… Jury’s big prize (I am really sorry for the quality of this picture. I know, I really screwed this up, but I just hope you’ll see something), it’s a little dog made from a cell phone acumulator. It is really…little… So, sometimes, big does not mean good.

So, you see, just put your own creativity to work and you can just make stuff that can be useful, are unique in urban space, you’re special and creative. Besides, materials don’t cost you a damn thing, just browse your parents’ garage or storage room and choose from there things that everybody put hem aside or throw them away.

In a few months, this contest will become national and will be classified in function of specific publics: amators, professionals, youngsters etc. But, in each case, handcraft, trash and ecology go well together, don’t you think?

Bahoi is a Romanian youngster from Constanta, a department in south-east part of Romania. He became a star on the Internet. Everybody’s watching his videos. But the question remains: who is he and what did Bahoi do so interesting?

He started by making little videos at his home, with the webcam. Videos that have subjects as “how to do breakdance”, “hot to dance hip hop”, “how to dance house”, “how to dance manele” (a music genre very listened by a sort of pop culture mainstream in Romania). Bahoi is around 19 years old and he practices the kind of humour today very practiced by youngsters, Jackass style.

All he needed was a webcam. After that, he uploaded his videos on Youtube (ex: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bahoi+constanta+tampiti&search=related&v=TFGklvecxg0&page=1) and on Trilulilu, Romanian version of Youtube.

Having so much success, he started after that to make films as he teaches everyone interested to hack passwords: “how to hack messenger”, “how to download free softwares”, “hacking yahoo” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh886P1xLCE).

These type of videos are completed by fragments of his everyday life: how he jumps from a bridge, how he sings hip hop, how he parties: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_la17yY4XiY.

Filming with a webcam, with a cell phone or a video camera, Bahoi uploads the videos on Youtube, gaining points, having a lot of visions and becoming well known in his town.

His videos are a melting-pot of everyday scenes and basic humour. He likes to ironise manele singers, but he also declares himself a fan of this musical genre. He is looking recently for a sponsorship.

This is only a case of what a certain category of Romanian youngsters prefer: to see/make videos or photos of themselves, showing their sa called qualities, specially their financial status. Their exterior marks of standing-out are kitsch objects: very big chains made of gold, throwing with money (ad litteram), having big flashy cars or items. If girls are called “printese” (princesses), the boys call themselves “cocalari”. There is no equivalent in English, but that says it all, I think. One website was created to ironise these two categories: www.cocalari.com. The site is a pamphlet, but you have to understand that the pictures and the films are real, with people (mostly youngsters) who dress like that and want to stand out with any occasion.