Tag Team Graffiti
On my way to work one day, I saw a poster for the new Pink Panther movie starring Steve Martin, which was only partially defaced. Someone had drawn a talk bubble coming out of Steve Martin’s mouth, but put nothing in it!
This revealed a possibility that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. “I could make Inspector Jacques Clouseau say something! What should he say?”
I didn’t have a marker on me, and I was late to work, so I left it blank. Too bad, since whatever I wrote would have been a thousand times funnier than anything in the movie. I liked that someone had done this, though.
One, it’s a good division of labor. Because most likely, the person who is best able to determine what poster needs to be defaced, and to draw the talk bubble, is not the same one who can best come up with something funny to put in the bubble.
Two, it brings strangers together in a graffiti scheme so decentralized, the co-conspirators themselves have no way of identifying their poster defacing parnters, and thus there’s no ratting and plea copping.
And three, it shows that there are creative opportunities everywhere. It just takes someone with the vision to start that first talk bubble.
Update: In the comments to this post, Kristen links to the group that is responsible for the bubble I saw.
6 years ago