Below are some shots of political graffiti from the back alley behind Parc Avenue between Fairmont and Saint Viateur of a kind of panicked fight.

From what i can tell some french lads started crossing out unilingual english personal parking signs and ghetto enforcing bill 101 and then some english lads lost their shit and essentially told them to learn english… a fun old game it is, but perhaps not the best use of paint.

THE OLD:

I am happy that others of us here in Quebec are using paint to explore culture from deeper angles. That is one of the many reasons why we at kngfu (one of the companies behind CitySpk) started whoweare.ca

The film Antipodes, a selection from the whoweare.ca project, is directed by my friend and mentor Daniel Canty, a writer and filmmaker born and raised in the ruff and tumble west end Montreal city of Lachine.

The film features Point Saint Charles painter Raphael Sottolichio

THE NEW:

Warsaw in Poland probably has more aerosol painted Popes per square mile than communist era building bricks. The place is just covered in graffiti.

http://www.concretemagazine.org/

Photo from 515 on Flickr Creative Commons

Two German lads turn a fire extinguisher into a military issue paint cannon.

Looks to be heat seeking. www.jaepas.de

Hey ya’ll

While I was thinking of what would make a good first post on this blog, I stumbled upon this visual delight. Alphabet Trucks, which kind of plays on the same letter theme as Cityspk, is the work of photographer Eric Tabuchi. Remember the games you’d play as a youngster, on those long car rides ? That’s exactly what I was thinking when I first saw this. Tabuchi apparently spent a few years on endless highways to create this project, which will later be turn into a book, Alphabet Trucks.

On a deeper note from the artist:

“Through language (Alphabet) and displacement (Trucks), Alphabet Truck therefore questions, beyond its formal aspects and references, the notions of membership, identity and coeducation.“

It’s truck typography…nuff said

-craig

via LENS CULTURE

Those of you who have been walking around the Montreal plateau lately might have noticed this mysterious rebus tagged on doors and walls in the neighborhood. The ones I photographed are spray painted around St-Laurent, Duluth and Roy near our office. Apparently there has been a sighting in NDG too.

Makes me wonder if it is a a weird Montreal urban statement or some marketing scheme part of a teaser campaign that will reveal itself soon. I took a few shots from my phone and also found this golden one on Flickr. Hmmmm.

We are happy to announce that the streets of Montreal are once again graced with the Hunter S. Thompson sidekick styled art of Other. After an extended two year disappearing act to Berlin, he is back to leave traces of his lovely mind in the form of words and pictures on walls all over the city. If you don’t know his work, i would recommend you visit any number of train yards in the city. Or check his site where he often has things for sale at a remarkably good price.

The word is a sneak preview of 30 new pieces for an upcoming LA art show are going to be diseminated on the hush hush in a week. If you haven’t sent him your email yet to see… send him your mail at troy.lovegates@gmail.com, and tell him cityspk sent you…

I am still hoping that he delivers on an impending project in which people send him found sweatpants and then he paints on him. I would definately file that under one of the most unique projects ever heading. As far as the background, he tells me of his buddy Hal: There was a guy named Hal over in ottawa who found some dirty old sweat pants on the street. He wrote a story about it. How if you start looking for it there are all sorts of dirty old clothes beaten by the elements. Like a sock that turned some blue, some green and has bird shit and finger paint on it in the lane. Clothes like that — that have been sitting out for some of the seasons in a row, and starting to mix right in with the pavement. But that is a bit of a dime a dozen. The real and somewhat rarer gem is the abandoned sweat pants. It was some years ago i read his story. But he found them on a bike ride, chucked his old shorts and rode around town in the found sweat pants until he came to the bay and then he went swimming in them and they ballooned all up in the water. He said how he took a real solace in the comfort of those worn in sweat pants in the shallows of the bay. He made that throw away his…

So, now, all of that is lost to history, but i ask you still to help Other recreate the sweat pant nostalgia and send him your found sweatpants to paint on. If you wanted to set something up, you could maybe just write him at the aforementioned email. Only the most crusty need apply…