Collaborating with Strangers
TAoN No. 160: A different way of looking at street stickers. Plus a special mystery edition of Missing Words
Hello from New Orleans, where it’s a little warmer than I’d like.
Today I want to tell you about a project I love from a friend of TAoN. He describes it as a “collaboration with unknown street artists” — and it’s one that relies on what I’d say is a sort of street art jujitsu.
One popular manifestation of street art is of course the sticker: They proliferate, in certain areas of many cities, promoting artists, brands, political views, etc. For most of us, most of the time, these are all just visual noise that we tend to tune out. But Constantin Boym, of Boym Partners, got interested in them. Boym (who lives in Manhattan) says:
“My every walk in the city has turned into a hunt for stickers, which are actually different in every neighborhood. This area of culture exists as if in a different dimension. It is simultaneously omnipresent and ‘invisible’ to most pedestrians. A few of them are commercial in nature, others are tags, but most feature cryptic signs or messages that deny any understanding by outsiders.
“Who makes these stickers, and why? Sometimes it feels like there is a ‘dialog’ between stickers but mostly they appear indifferent to each other.”
As a practical matter, such stickers are commonly viewed as an aesthetic nuisance, or plain old vandalism hungry for space to claim. Boym responded, counterintuitively, by providing such space: He placed a number of 12” x 12” steel panels in downtown Manhattan, attaching them to random street posts or scaffolding. And then he let the strangers take over:
“In the course of two months, freshly painted panels turned into spontaneous collages of messages, icons, and signatures.”
Regular readers know that I often admire the way street artists perceive the world — some are quite skilled seeing how their work can really interact with its environment, spotting what could be. I think Boym is doing something similar here — and in a way that leverages the street art instinct to seek certain kinds of spaces. It’s like street art flypaper, or a new form of (semi) passive collecting.
Two of these panels have been “harvested” from their street spots for inclusion in NYCxDESIGNxSOUVENIR, a Boym Partners-curatedd exhibition that is part of the larger NYCxDESIGN event later this month in Manhattan. Details are here.
Boym calls the tagged-up panels “an authentic memento” of New York. To me, he’s also done something that triggers a different way of seeing that goes beyond any one city: His blank panels reframe a visual aspect of the urban environment that’s mostly taken for granted; they are like tiny, self-populating museums that change the way we see something familiar. It’s a highly pleasing example of creative perception.
PS, in his note to me about all this, Boym wondered:
“I was not able to find any comprehensive book or website on the subject [of street stickers]. Perhaps one of your readers can shed some light on all this.”
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Dictionary of Missing Words is an exercise in paying attention to phenomena you encounter — sensations, concepts, states between states, feelings, slippery things — that could be named, but don’t seem to be. More here and here.
This week’s missing word is from JLynn, via the comments — and it’s a little different! Here it is:
I have a missing word mystery that could use some potential insight. There’s a term that I know for a fact used to exist, but I can now not find anywhere on the internet. It is the term for when the weather outside matches or reflects your mood. For example you are sad, and the weather outside is grey and rainy.
JLynn continues: “It is not personification, or pathetic fallacy (both of which I've found suggested many times on forums, in my search for this!); these terms are not specific enough to this exact phenomenon. … I recall that it is a two-word term.”
So — anybody out there know the term that JLynn seeks? This is our first missing-word mystery story. Either way, I love the idea, whether there’s a word for it or not!
IN OTHER NEWS
“All of My Mistakes Have Led Me To You,” new work from friend of TAoN Tim Belonax, on view at The Compound in Emeryville, CA.
A lovely idea: “With this latest book by Daido Moriyama everyone can create their own ‘random walk’ through the streets that Daido Moriyama roamed, by sticking the 62 B&W and 38 colour Polaroids images into the book in an order that can be decided individually.” (Thx LJ!)
“I miss busy signals.” Bob Sassone on his new book-via-email project, Paper Says It Might Rain.
“Sophie Calle discusses her celebrated exhibition 'The Ghosts of Orsay', a project she undertook while living clandestinely in an abandoned room in the former Orsay Station Hotel, now the post-renovation Musée d'Orsay.” An endlessly fascinating artist. (Thx Ed!)
Speaking of pleasing street art:
OKAY THAT’S IT!
As always, I value your feedback (suggestions, critiques, positive reinforcement, constructive insults directed at me, not at anyone else, etc.), as well as your tips or stories or personal noticing rituals, things we need a word for, and of course your icebreakers: consumed@robwalker.net. Or use the comments.
—> Or just click the heart symbol. That always makes my day.
And thanks for reading …
rw
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All this by Rob Walker PO Box 171, 748 Mehle St., Arabi LA 70032. Send me mail!
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One such word is Syntony.
syn·to·ny. -nē plural -es. 1. : the state of being normally responsive to and in harmony with the environment.
Syntony Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
https://www.merriam-webster.com › ...
I have a new missing word to ponder. The sound of writing with a pen on paper is typically described as “scratching,” but today’s modern gel pens are so smooth there is nary a scratch to be heard. There’s still a sound to it, though, that is not a swoosh or a hum or a thrum - I can’t think of any word that perfectly captures that satisfying, almost rhythmic contact between pen and paper.