Graffiti artists ponder fall of the wall
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Shanghai Daily, August 2, 2011
When it first started, graffiti writers in New York considered it the ultimate accomplishment to see subway trains carrying their names (painted while stationary in depots at night) around the city.
Many local graffitists admit that they have thought about painting trains, but most are deterred by the high levels of security on the railways here.
"It is just not possible," says Hurri. "The situation here is different from other countries."
And its history of illegal street painting is one that the non-Chinese painters here are trying to share with the locals.
By "hitting" - or "bombing" - the streets with graffiti, though, these graffiti writers don't mean vandalism or "gangster things." And they don't mean painting over cars and apartment buildings.
Storm stresses that for most writers it doesn't mean criminal activity at all. As he puts it, graffiti is a way of life, a form of expression and definitely more than a hobby. It's a standpoint that fellow artist Nine backs up.
"You find your spots and if people get upset about it then you stop. I'm not here to upset anybody and I don't want to overstep my boundaries in any way," he says. "I just want to be settled in, have my areas to paint, not harm anybody and have a good time."
He adds, "The whole thing about graffiti is getting up, getting your stuff out and getting noticed. And if you can find a way to do that without upsetting the city, then go do it."
Which is part of the reason all of these writers - whether they like Moganshan Road or not - are rallying to try and find a new, accepted spot to replace the wall.
For some young start-ups in Shanghai and across the Chinese mainland, the line between legal and illegal, or more specifically, what is accepted versus what is not, is often learned from practice and mistakes.
In June, China had its biggest graffiti artist gathering in the city of Changsha in Hunan Province, at a long wall next to the Xiang River.
More than 100 graffiti writers brought their spraypaint and creativity. However, things went a little out of control when some writers went off to paint on residential building walls and private vehicles.
"You learn unwritten rules like these from more experienced graffitists, from the Internet and from quarrels," says Tin.G.
The wall on Moganshan Road is going down. Both Chinese and non-Chinese graffitists in the city agree that there won't be a spot like it anymore.
But something else will pop up, according to Yemen and the others. And when it does, the wall's destruction could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Shanghai's most passionate painters; they're hoping it'll not only give the scene a much-needed pick-me-up, but that it'll also be a unifying factor for both the local and foreign writers.
"I think one of the biggest mistakes that we've made is that we separate the Chinese writers from the foreign writers. I want to kill that," Nine says. "We've all got the same interests, we've got to work together. The scene's new here and if we don't work together then it's not going to happen."
But Storm is convinced that something will happen, and it'll happen soon.
"The scene in Shanghai is going to evolve," he says. "I don't know how, but it's going to change ... it has to change. There is no other possibility. You see it in a lot of other countries, so why not in China?"
