holiday hijinx in Londons Camden Town Tube Station.
Posted by justin on 02 Jan 2007 at 07:40 pm | Tagged as: graffiti, in yo face
Found this by way of the BBC today:
As I emerged from my little transport capsule, I initially felt that something was off, but quickly came to see that something really was quite on. Paint was everywhere. On the ground, on the tiles, across adverts, covering tube maps and even electronic signs. A grin spread across my face as I realised that Camden Town tube station got massively graffiti bombed!
Say what you will, but I love a good graffiti bomb. Perhaps it’s my inner psychedelic soldier still fighting for the freedom of the mind or perhaps it’s my resistance to becoming too much of an adult, but I love seeing the normal world bathed in colour, reborn in Pantone.
Thats an excerpt from a blog written by a guy named Dave Knapik from Chicago who has recently moved to London. I was also recently in London and spent time in this, the busiest of the london tube stations overall. From the amount of CCTV cameras and security EVERYWHERE in that city, something of this scale being pulled off is quite a feat. Here’s Flickr account with over 50 photos of the incident.
The online debate over the validity of this kind of thing is raging in full swing, I thought it might be fun to rage along over here as well.
When I first heard, I was excited. But after seeing the photos, I was disappointed that the work was very mediocre, with an emphasis on vandalising the station. To bad– someone could have done something extraordinarily beautiful, but its just more fuel for the anti-graffiti establlishment.
here’s a link to some graffiti art I really like:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/60155630@N00/with/345682016/
What I failed to mention is that BTP (british transport police) had issued a vendetta type public service announcement saying not to graffiti over X-mas, that they were going to be out and that you were going to get caught, I believe the taggers probably thought that they had pulled the most hilarious coup in town, by sneaking into the busiest / most surveyed tube station in London without getting caught and defiling a large amount of it. To think about what it took for them to make it in (miles of underground track with a dangerous third rail, probably 30+ CCTV cameras in every corner of the station) sounds like a bit of a commitment for a bunch of spray painted letters. Having experience that station for myself, and knowing that the paint can be easily scrubbed off and had to ride for a few days while being cleaned at night, I can appreciate the large amount of space that was covered by rather large ugly scrawl.(of course I would have done it differently..) but.. so it goes. The most interesting part of this story is that it made international news.