Guerilla stencil artists are on the loose…and they’re promoting urban biking. Sometimes guerrilla work isn’t drawn by artists at all, just concerned people trying to make a statement. The GBL, Guerrilla Bike Lane, even made a video of their nighttime artistic installation. They even used a bike to help with the painting. In the middle of the night, on Monday, July the 26th (or more correctly, the morning of the 27th) a group of activist artists made a bold statement on the streets of Baltimore. They left behind a bike lane, stencil art, and their manifesto which reads:
“The Guerrilla Bike Lane arose from a desire to express ourselves and our passion for an escalating need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. We seek to promote and establish fair and safe riding conditions for cyclists in Baltimore. The intention of our guerrilla artwork is to educate the public using environmentally friendly and creative means in a non-aggressive way. We hope this will serve as a catalyst for people to see and build the community within the city, to consciously take action instead of settling for an inactive way of life.”
After years of cycling associations begging for bike lanes on the bridges and access roads in Lyon, France only to be ignored, Velorution decided to take the paintbrush into their own hands. The group decided to paint bike symbols at key locations to get their point across.
And it works, the cars leave a lane open for cyclists and the groups can ride safely over the bridge.
Some artists take their art into the comedic realm, like these stencils found on the streets in Adelaide, Australia.
The Urban Repair Squad out of Toronto promotes biking and has made it their mission, “To encourage bicycling as an antidote to the poison that is car culture. To actively construct a positive future of what urban transportation could be by installing it NOW. ”
Friday August 13th 2010, 1:28 pm
Filed under: Art,Guerrilla
Blu has recently finished another stop motion urban graffiti style animation that travels through the urban environment – and it’s a big one. This one is called “Big Bang Big Boom”. Check it out:
On my way to run some errands the other day I drove down a road that had obviously been driven on while the striping had still been fresh because the white on one side suddenly started weaving all over the road. It was interesting because one, I continuously like to think about tracing pathways and two, it fascinated me to think of who it was that drove over the fresh paint and why they couldn’t seem to keep a straight line. A getaway vehical perhaps?
It reminded me of a recent post earlier this month from Abitare regarding some bikers who decided to throw a several gallons of colorful paint at the entrances to the intersection at the busy Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin. The cars then would drive through these massive puddles of color and make lines with their tires through the intersection that would trace their movement as they went on their way. While this doesn’t trace the total movement of cars, it makes for a pretty intersection piece at least that helps to gain a feel for the specific traffic intersections and flow.
This reminds me of a previous post on active paths and desire lines which referenced a little invention for the bicycle called the Contrail. The idea behind this invention is to have a device that stays with the bike to map out it’s path in real time versus being place specific and requiring the user to pass through. Instead the Contrail helps to map the path instead of the space.
What I think would be really interesting is to map out vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian in a manner like the Contrail in a way that could be stored as data but seen visually, even if only online, to help understand how the different modes interact, where problem areas are and where it looks and feels as though the three work together harmoniously. That and it would be really nifty to look at.
