Hi there! I`m David - a street art hunter from Lviv, Ukraine. I’m really happy to be a part of The Street Art Cities community, but there’s a thing I am pretty concerned about. Looking through the artworks my colleagues post I notice, that most of them are made by famous or infamous artists, but still - we know their names, we know the list of their artworks. For me, that is not how street art initially works - it’s about the passion of the people, whose names are unknown to us - we don’t know how they look like, what is their Instagram username etc. but we know how they feel like and we can relate. That’s why I often capture lots of little artworks, someone can call “unaesthetic” or “it’s just a tag” but we all forget to look for a person behind that! Walking through the city streets I see stains of broken hearts or the people who found their love, or little artworks of people who can’t do anything big, so they just try to leave their artwork somewhere in the corner. They just want their voices to be noticed!
I reckon street art is all about making small voices major - it’s the people’s art everyone can do! Let’s not forget about it, friends. That’s why I call you to hear me out and to sometimes capture those little things, that are hiding somewhere in the streets called - “People’s voice”. Every single human’s artwork supplements the Humankind art.
Let’s keep that in mind and don’t make street art way to sterile.
One of the major problems, is that those tags or interventions are quickly overpainted. Our aim is to have a sustainable platform, with an indeed a minimum aesthetic value artworks (makes sense, our app users pay for the app). Who is gonna check weekly if these interventions are still there? We want to guide our app users to artworks which are still there. It’s how our platform works, and regarding the 60.000 artworks, we can’t consider us as really mainstream.
I don’t think that we have to upload every stripe of paint we stumble across.
I remember a very vague almost gone peace symbol… of course it’s a voice, true. With all respect, uploading all the peace symbols we stumble on? I am not sure about that.
In my city Oostende, some ’ artists ’ spray random tags in bicycle tunnels, a month later it’s cleaned by city services. I don’t want to ruin the app user his or her time and let them visit that wall which probably has no tag. And if it has a tag (in Oostende it’s usually like " West Block "), really sure that they really wanted to see that one?
You see, I`m not talking about my own photos, some of them were not really worth it. And yeah, you’re right about the tags being temporary pretty often. But some artworks are not as small as tags, but not as big, as the others. That’s what we can talk about.
It’s a thin line, and there is not really an answer on buddy? It’s about an interpretation as individual, from the artist to admirer.
Just tried to explain it from my personal opinion, and with the knowledge what is behind SAC.
But don’t understand me wrong, you really do have a point. What’s seems like a useless tag could be ,or is an express of love, hate. An emotion.
Hi David,
First of all, let me start with paying my respect. Because your a hunter that joined us while his country is in peril. If these street art hunts of yours help you to take mind of things, I’m super happy for you. Please stay safe, I don(t know the exact situation in your city, but I can imagine everybody lives with fear.
To answer your question or feedback: our platform wants to show all art in the streets, based on the community work of our hunters. We consider our hunters to be the street art ambassadors of their city and show our users the best experience to discover art. But that’s the problem at this moment, nobody is going to visit for now, only locals and people passing through and I gues they have other things on their mind. So artists, even if they want to, avoid Ukraine for now. They often have families and mouths to feed to not take such risks, although artist like C215, Banksy (off cours) and recently Bandit Graffiti visited the region.
So let’s all hope the situation gets solved fast and when the fog clears we can all enjoy some of the beautiful remaing art in Ukraine.
So for now David, stay safe, and realise your part of a global community.
Thank you really much! I love street art so I enjoy being an ambassador of my country on this level. I understand the situation, but, if some people could find courage to visit our beautiful country - you’re welcome! The most important thing to remember is to stay safe!
Warm greetings from Ukraine, and stay safe too!