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Summer in Toronto is the season to get outside and hit the streets. This time around, we at Archenemy decided to eschew art on canvasses and paper in favour of back alleys and brick walls. While some make a sharp distinction between the artistic value of “street art” vs. “graffiti,” we want to embrace both for their wildly different creative contributions to our city’s colourful landscape.
Those who make the mistake of confusing the two will soon realize that street art and graffiti are vastly different enterprises, which we aim to explore in this issue.
Art on the streets is an important aspect of Toronto’s creative culture, and one that continues to grow and fill those blank concrete walls around us. Next time you’re going for a stroll, look around for the marks the city’s creative villains have left on the streets.
Kate Yantzi Community Editor
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CREATIVE DIRECTOR.
GENERAL INQUIRIES
EDITOR IN CHIEF.
contact@archemag.com
JOSHUA DUCHESNE joshua@archemag.com
SUBMISSIONS & CONTRIBUTIONS
COPY EDITOR.
If you’re interested in
HEATHER PIERCE
contributing please visit
heather@archemag.com
archemag.com/submissions for details.
COMMUNITY EDITOR, SALES & DISTRIBUTION KATIE YANTZI katie@archemag.com
WRITERS & CONTRIBUTORS ROBERT IVENIUK ALEXANDRA DUNCAN
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BACK ALLEY KINGDOMS
Toronto writing royalty SKAM gets real about graffiti culture.
THE CITY IS OUR CANVAS
Street art & graffiti as tools for communty improvement.
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FROM ARCHENEMY
THANKS
THOUGHTS ABOUT GRAFFITI TODAY
Academia explains the street.
SIGNATURE TORONTO WALLS
GRAFFITI VERNACULAR
Learn mo r e ab ou t u s. arch e nemyma gazi ne .c om 7
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Toronto writing royalty SKAM gets real about graffiti culture. //////////
interview
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[At Homebase, 11 Camden St.]
paint is designed for the artwork so it’s better quality.
SKAM: If you want a seat, you can sit there. : So its really become more mainstream. : I can sit on that thing? S: Its changed. Its changed big time. Like, S: Yeah, yeah.
we used to have pen pals. I used to have pen pals from around the world and that’s
: Okay cool. So, I did a little bit of research on you, checked out your stuff—
where I would find examples of other graffiti in different cities. Now you just Google whatever and something will come up in a
S: Is it recording now?
matter of seconds. So, a lot has changed, and not just for graffiti but other subcultures.
: Yeah, it’s recording now. You’ve been a graffiti artist for over two decades…
S: Yup, over 20 years. One of the first in Toronto. One of the first in Canada.
Twenty years is a long time for something not to change.
: You mentioned “subcultures”. Graffiti back in the day and definitely back when you started was heavily influenced by Hip Hop.
: You’re from the East End of Toronto. Is that where you started putting up your work?
Now it seems to be evolving and incorporating other subcultures like skate culture for instance. Where do you think it’s going in
S: Yup I just started doing tags in the
the future taking this and recent styles like
East End.
stencils in account? I see things by people like ANSER and it’s very different to what a
: What do you think has changed between
lot of graffiti artists do.
when you started and what graffiti or street art is now?
S: Well they’re not graffiti artists, they’re street artists. There’s a huge difference.
S: Internet. Technology. Supplies. The amount of walls that are available to artists these days, the support… you know, we never had
: That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about.
that in the early 90s. There was no Internet, obviously, and you couldn’t communicate with
S: For me, I define graffiti as the graffiti
other graffiti artists locally or worldwide.
you would see on New York subways, type-
Now it’s easy to do that.
based, basically someone’s name done as big and stylistic and cool as possible.
The supplies have changed. We used to use
To me that’s a graffiti artist: someone
North American hardware brands: spray paint
who has a hand style. Someone who can tag.
that wasn’t designed for artwork, spray paint
They’re similar to someone who know how
that was designed to paint your picnic table
to do calligraphy, right. They know how to
or your barbeque, stuff like that, with a
manipulate with their hands and deliver
limited range of colours. Maybe 20 colours.
style. You know? Writing their name with a
Now we have over 200 colours. The spray
marker or a can, that to me is graffiti.
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THE CITY IS OUR C A N VA S Street art & graffiti as tools for community improvement. ////////// Katie Yantzi
BABY STEPS
Look up. Way, way up.
This is a point acknowledged by Alexis Kane-Speer, It’s hard to miss the vibrant blue, yellow, and
the founding director of the Sustainable Thinking
pink winding its way up the side of the concrete
and Expression on Public Space (STEPS) Initiative,
apartment building on 200 Wellesley Street East,
the organizing force behind the mural at 200
eventually bursting into the image of a phoenix
Wellesley. Through art, STEPS makes the city more
near the top. Not only is the St. James Town’s
vibrant, “but it’s not necessarily the end goal for
29-storey mural a high-reaching one, it’s officially
us,” says Kane-Speer, noting that STEPS aims to help
the world’s tallest, a commendable feat for a
people “rethink how public space can be used” and
neighbourhood more often associated with its crime
how they can be a part of community-building.
rate than its art scene. But to paint the whole of St. James Town with this negative brush would be to
Art, then, becomes a way of engaging people across
overlook the hunger for change that many residents
ethnic, age, socio-economic and cultural barriers.
are beginning to articulate. And the world’s tallest
“If you give [someone] a creative outlet, most
mural has been a part of that process.
people can communicate what it is that they would like to see or envision for their community,” Kane-
As creatives, it is easy to see the creation of
Speer says.
beautiful art as the primary aim in such public projects——art for art’s sake——but street art
In St. James Town, the creative outlet sparked
in communities can function on so many other
a great deal of communication. “It started
levels that confer benefits on the surrounding
wider conversations about how the community and
neighbourhood. Street art is meant to look good, no
infrastructure there needs to be improved, and
doubt. But often, art is also the vehicle by which
provided a platform and a way for residents to
important conversations are started and grassroots
voice these concerns.” Community consultations
social innovation is achieved.
were held throughout the process of designing the mural, which gave residents a chance to share their
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THINKING ABOUT GRAFFITI TODAY ////////// Alexandra Duncan
Modern (“Hip Hop”) graffiti has had a
sub-category of graffiti writing. While this
relatively short, yet eventful, history, sprouting
classification may make some sense in terms of pure
in New York City in the 1960s and rapidly
chronology, for the sake of categorization, I view
proliferating around the world. While most
it as much more useful to view street art as an
international graffiti shares certain aesthetic
umbrella term, encompassing all unsanctioned art
characteristics (bold colours, ornate lettering,
forms created in urban public space, with graffiti
etc.), this has become a truly “glocal” phenomenon,
being just one of its several sub-categories.
with graffiti writers applying local aesthetics to
Graffiti involves the use of spray paint or paint
their works, such as manga-inspired graffiti by
markers, and is associated with a particular
Japanese artists like Shizento Motel.
aesthetic (described above), while street art more generally refers to a range of aesthetic styles
The terms graffiti and street art are
and the use of many materials/techniques including
often used interchangeably, however there is a
graffiti, stencils, stickers, wheatpaste posters,
definitive distinction to be made between the two,
ceramic tiles, and more. The important thing to
based primarily upon aesthetic style, technique,
note is that the distinctions between graffiti and
and materials. Some describe street art as a
street art are becoming increasingly blurred... not 46
that they were ever particularly clear to begin
natural and the constructed, the material world and
with. For the purposes of this article, I will use
the world of representation, collide [1]. In other
both terms interchangeably, as what matters here
words, when discussing graffiti, we must remember
is the presence of both as unsanctioned visual
to consider more than just the way a piece looks
modifications upon the urban landscape.
and what a piece says. Where is it located: is it on a busy street, in a sketchy back alley, or in
For decades now, past discussions of
an underpass? How much risk was involved for the
graffiti have tended to focus on a few issues (like
graffiti writer? What are the cultural attitudes and
vandalism, and “is graffiti art?”), and on a few key
legal policies concerning graffiti the city? What is
players (most recently Banksy and Shepard Fairey),
the texture of the surface on which it resides? Are
and on a few key locations (NYC, LA). However,
there traces of former graffiti works in the same
what interests me is the importance of graffiti
space? How does the presence of the piece transform
and street art in a modern multicultural city like
the experience of being in that space? How does it
Toronto. How does the presence of unsanctioned “art”
transform the space into a place?
in our city’s public spaces affect urban ecologies of nature, architecture, spaces, places, urban
citizens, and institutions? Graffiti is more than
allows us to begin to develop a truly comprehensive
just an aesthetic object to be viewed; the acts of
idea of what meaning is carried by a street
creating and encountering graffiti are both haptic
artwork. Moreover, they provide us with an
and tactile experiences, as well as visual ones.
illuminating way of viewing the unique differences
Asking all of these questions (and more)
among international urban cultures. Toronto is home
Tracey Bowen, a communications scholar from
to a colourful, thriving graffiti scene, which is
the University of Toronto, explores graffiti as an
heavily centered upon particular areas, such as
embodied, performative, spatializing practice which
the Queen-Spadina zone, yet it is still present
creates and transforms spaces in which the social
and plentiful in all of the city’s other areas and
and the political, the Self and the Other, the
neighbourhoods. Toronto’s graffiti culture also
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