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Meet Ian The Meow

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Meet Ian The Meow, The Cat That Reminds San Francisco to “Be Nice.”
broke-ass stuart

If you regularly walk around San Francisco, chances are you’ve met Ian The Meow – the cute cat that politely reminds passersby to “be nice” But few people have been lucky enough to find the elusive cat and score an interview.

Luckily for me, I am one of those few.

Ian, a lot of people want to know, are you from San Francisco or somewhere else?

“I was born in Astoria, Queens, NYC. The cat was born in 2008 in the UK. Technically Ian is an immigrant. But San Francisco’s signature overcast and fog reminded me of home.”

Protecting Artistic Vandalism: Graffiti and Copyright Law (2013)

Celia Lerman, Protecting Artistic Vandalism: Graffiti and Copyright Law, 2 N.Y.U. J. INTELL. PROP. & ENT. L. 295, 295 (2013)(online link)

Introduction

Does copyright law protect graffiti? This is a question of growing importance in today’s art scene. Books, CD’s, t-shirts and other items featuring graffiti images are often released without permission from the original graffiti artists. For a recent example, take the graffiti exhibition mounted in a Buenos Aires art gallery by Peruvian artist José Carlos Martinat. Martinat’s exhibition consisted of appropriated pieces of graffiti that he had carefully removed, without permission, from the walls of private properties in Buenos Aires. Martinat also offered these pieces for sale. Local graffiti artists reacted furiously to this exhibition and collectively destroyed all of their graffiti pieces in situ during the gallery’s opening night. Examples like this lead us to wonder if graffiti artists could receive any protection under copyright law.

At least some pieces of graffiti are suitable for copyright protection, insofar as they are original works, fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Still, why should we protect expressions created by an illegal act (painting a third party’s property without her permission)? Should the law help graffiti artists to benefit from their transgressions? Moreover, if the primary purpose of copyright is to incentivize the creation of valuable creative works, should we protect and promote illegal art?

Just sayin...

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Putin torches peace (art: Rebel Bear, UK)

The Spectacle shone brightly yesterday in the White House.... but Rebel Bear shows where the real fire is! Follow the street art to see where the breadcrumbs lead: Stencil Archive searches for Putin and Ukraine.

Sunday Musk Slug-fest

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Salting the oligarch in Baltimore (ph ryansc0tt)

While uploading fresh stencil photos today, we realized that a stack of anti-Musk pics recently came to Stencil Archive from several different ways:

A Field Guide to Wheatpasting from CrimethInc

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Go small or large, creative or message-based. Wheatpasting is messy,  but also a great way to repeat your work, stencil-made or not.

A Field Guide to Wheatpasting

Everything You Need to Know to Blanket the World in Posters
2017-07-18
(Original Link with pdf poster, diagrams, images)

Like graffiti, wheatpasting is a direct action technique for communicating with your neighbors and redecorating your environment. Because it’s easy to mass-produce posters, wheatpasting enables you to deploy a nuanced, complex message at a large number of locations with minimal effort and risk. Repetition makes your message familiar to everyone and increases the chances that others will think it over. If you’re looking for posters to paste up, we offer a wide selection of poster designs to print out or order in bulk.

This is excerpted from our book, Recipes for Disaster, which details a wealth of related tactics.