actually i am already talking to the detroit news and the detroit freep
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Here is a building that I worked on with permission. PJ's Lager House. Obviously some Detroiters approve of what I am doing, and are willing to support the project!
PJ's Lager House
There you go that would be considered a nice project. You got the owners permission and it was done tastefully.
You cannot justify that the door was already tagged so it was okay for you to apply your own style of tagging all you were doing was to lower yourself down to the level of the original tagger.
If you use your talents on projects such as the wall you will gain much more respect and draw much more positive attention then the shock and awe and methods as you did earlier.
But you are still not understanding what everybody is upset about,the facts are somebody else applied paint on property that did not belong to them and they did not have the right to do that.
Then you did the exact same thing.Two wrongs do not make a right .
Would you be happy if somebody dumped a can of paint on your car? It would not matter if it was a rusted out piece of junk that nobody wanted.The fact is that car is your property and nobody else would have the right to do anything with it.
It is called respect.
Seriously, you are terrible, who goes around vandalizing the city for shits and giggles? Right… some rich kid from the suburbs who went to Country Day then CCS on his parents’ dime, and was then so bored that he started destroying himself and the city as a hobby/career. You shoot ruin porn, but unlike most people, you don’t just study the decay that is happening, you destroy it further. I don’t doubt you rent a space in the city, but I doubt you will ever be a property owner here, you will never raise you kids here, your just here to play and it’s horrible. Please get out of my city.
last time i checked i don't shoot ruin porn. and im not doing this project for shits and giggles. and yes im looking at getting a property in the city, but i do currently rent. if you feel that strongly about nothing happening to the numerous abandoned buildings, they why don't you go and do something about it instead of sitting on the internet and just complaining?
You have no more right to throw paint all over public spaces and private property in Detroit than I would in your rich Oakland County suburb.
You know what I did with a vacant structure in Detroit? I bought it. I live in it. I pay my taxes. What a fucking concept, right? That is doing something about it. Too bad you didn't get to throw your paint all over my house and ruin it before someone with some work ethic and respect for others got to move in and fix it up like a decent person, right?
You're a child who has no respect for anyone elses' property. Typical for rich children like you - you've been handed everything in life so you don't know the value of anything and you're bored stupid, and just plain stupid to boot, and this is what the world gets as a result. Some of us didn't have it so easy that we went to Country Day and CCS and got to fuck around and make other people miserable all the time.
I am an art lover and a photographer myself. What you do is artistic, but you have no right to be doing it to what is not yours, and subjecting other people to it.
Buy one of these spaces in Detroit and do whatever you want to it. Then you can call it art, and it is rightfully yours. If you were really talented you could get a grant - there are substantial ones out there - but alas, that would require real work, not just vandalism justified in the name of art.
You make me sick, and I know who you are. You would be extremely wise to watch your back. It is dangerous out there. And the lawlessness doesn't apply simply to throwing paint around. With the slow police response times sometimes us tax-paying residents have to resort to vigilante justice.
You go around vandalizing one of the world's most dangerous cities and you're on facebook...and everyone can see who your girlfriend is...and what you look like...for all that fancy education, you are still as dumb as shit, you know that?
Who forgot to instill decent values? Joellyn?
as someone who has explored a lot of these places with a camera i would suggest just sticking to the photography. when i first entered the broderick tower in 2006 i saw rooms in that building that had paint splattered all over them. it wasnt art, it was a vandal who had taken wyland's left over paint and thrown it across the room and all over everything. thats the first thing i was reminded of when viewing your project. i found the painted truck interesting, but everything else is stuff ive seen by countless artists and vandals. there is nothing new here.
i can appreciate wanting to create or depict beauty in a place that many consider to be ugly or desolate. as i photographer i challenge you to do that with your lens, not by adding paint to make a statement.
as for bringing attention to these places for others, i think you are a little late to that party. detroit's ruins have been well documented and have gotten more than enough attention. i started exploring back in 2005 before things exploded when it was a small community of people who knew how to enter these places. our motto was always 'take only pictures, leave only footprints' and im proud to say that we never broke into these places and certainly werent destructive. by 2008 exploring had become so popular that i lost interest in it altogether. when suburban soccer moms are starting to get into places thats the time to get out...
oh and if you want to see how to take an abandoned factory and make it a place for art, look to the fisher body plant and the pyramid of wood blocks that were laid out. now thats creating something without being destructive, to me that was creativity at its best.
Richard,
You left this city for Tampa. What gives you any say in what happens to it and everything you left behind?
Finders keepers.
Southen, always glad to take you away from your busy schedule to have you back from time to time to add your perspective [[pun intended ;-)... I'm always in awe of your photography skills, and have sent many folks to your Flickr site...
...although I still get Vertigo even thinking about the image of your feet dangling from the edge of the Broderick Tower... :eek:
cuz im the one who acts as if they are still in high school? trying to scare people? i will buy a space in detroit and if i dont, its still art...
i dont live in oakland county anyways. so yes, do what you want, its your choice
and yes, im going through the grant process right now.
so it makes you a better person because you didnt go to the schools that i did?
what building did you buy?
before they fix it up? really? most the ways to save pretty much every building is to tear it down and rebuild it. they are not structurally safe... the people who were around when they went abandoned had the chance to save them or preserve them and they didnt do anything. just saying.