“The Internet and the increasing mobility of digital media are playing an integral role in the evolution of Street Art, a revolution in communication effectively transforming it into the first global people’s art movement.

While that may seem hyperbolic, just witness the millions of images of Street Art uploaded on photo sharing sites, the time lapse videos and full length films online, the hundreds of blogs, websites, discussion forums, chatrooms, Facebook pages, Twitter addresses, and phone and tablet apps dedicated entirely or partially to Street Art and graffiti, and the multifaceted culture that grows around it. Thousands of people daily are populating the databases, compiling a mountainous archive of something once quaintly referred to as an ephemeral art. This said, the transformative story is that the images are now freed from their sources to float in the ether for anyone with a digital device to access. Within the space of a decade, art that once lived and died on a wall with a local population is now shared via digital capture and upload, gaining access to a worldwide audience. Immediately.” – Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo, Eloquent Vandals : A History of Nuart Norway

Street Artist ROA in Norway (photo courtesy Nuart)

One of the three books BSA was published in during 2011, Eloquent Vandals tells the story of a Norwegian waterfront town that became a focal point for the emergence of Street Art during the first decade of the century. Edited by Marte Jølbo, Victoria Bugge Øye, and the Nuart festival founder Martyn Reed, the book explains how badass Street Artists and vandals can coalesce for a few weeks to make great walls come alive and educate through forums, roundtables, and lectures. Nuart and its accidental oracle, Mr. Reed, give us a smart and shining story of how to brilliantly engage public space with the very same artists who usually get blamed for defiling it.

Vhils at Nuart (photo © CF Salicath)

Over the last few years this port called Stavanger became a high profile portal for thrilling work by many globally known Street Art explorers every September and thanks to the easy reach of digital communications, people in cities across the globe experienced it. That was the very aspect that drew us into the project; the fact that Street Art has become so global so rapidly thanks to the engagement of everyday people via digital technology. In our chapter “Freed from the Wall, Street Art Travels the World”, we deconstruct the various pathways and digital social tribes that enable an elevated consciousness about this global peoples art movement.

“A large part of our understanding of art and its expression for generations has come from textbooks, lorded over by scholars and experts who were trained by others using similar texts passing along received knowledge and prejudices.  For those rebels of the graffiti and Street Art movement who have never given much credence to formal education, the unbound and chaotic nature of digital communications actually feels more organic and trustworthy.”

Skewville represents Brooklyn at Nuart (photo © Marte Jølbo)

To be invited to participate in this book along with experts whom we admire greatly, most notably culture critic Carlo McCormick and author and lecturer Tristan Manco, is a great honor. To give background and context for a festival that includes some of the heavy talents in Street Art including Vhils, Blu, Skewville, Logan Hicks, Graffiti Research Lab, Blek Le Rat, Chris Stain, Ericailcane, Swoon, Judith Supine, Nick Walker, Dot Masters, ROA, M-City, Evol, Dan Witz and many more, it was a rare honor indeed.

Dot Masters toying around at Nuart (photo © Nuart)

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