Autoterrorist

Brasilia is the ultimate planned, rationalized city, designed by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemayer in the 1950’s, perhaps the closest realization to the ideals of Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse. The city was built in a span of only four years, completely master-planned around grand plazas, huge avenues and butterfly interchanges, lined with the capital’s modernist Ministry buildings, residential sectors in huge apartment blocks, entertainment and cultural sectors all zoned and planned by one team of designers. Lucio Costa planned the city down to the last detail, even prescribing the color and design of taxi cabs and bus drivers’ uniforms.

A city planned in neutral whites, greys, glass, concrete and steel is a perfect canvas for the colorful re-creation and re-inscription by graffiti artists. I was glad to find these videos from Art 65 and Cent 5 Crew, aptly named “Terrorism in the Capital” which follow several Brasilia graffiti writers: TOFO, DRAO, AMINO and others.

Chapter 3 of “Terrorism in the Capital” is particularly revealing of the shock of graff color in the drab, decaying apartment blocks and side streets of the modernist capital.

Found via Art Crimes.

A few weeks ago I found out that my teacher and adviser, Aaron Campbell, was leaving the Friends World EAC faculty. Since he was responsible for the initial creation, advice and upkeep of the students’ blogs on the friends-world.org site, when he left, our blogs would be erased if we didn’t find hosting for them elsewhere. So for the past few weeks I’ve been working out the bugs with changing hosts.

The great news is, now I have my own domain name, Autoterrorist.org. I’m hoping for some changes in the blog for the future. The focus will remain on art: graffiti, street art, urban intervention art; and on architecture and urban planning. I’m hoping to start working with some like-minded people who might contribute content to the site. If you’re interested, leave a comment or email me at natalie at kuci dot org.

hello world!