Art's Next Big Medium

Pablo Aravena’s new film is an in-depth look at graffiti's global community

Mike Ichioka, The McGill Daily (McGill University)

MONTREAL (CUP)—Graffiti is
everywhere in Montreal. Tags scrawled
on walls up and down Milton, com-
mercial murals around the Plateau,
paint-covered ‘freeway underpasses on
the South Shore—most of us don’t go
a day without seeing some form of
street art. Yet how many of us stop to
give it any consideration beyond a
passing glance? Montreal director
Pablo Aravena aims to address this
ignorance with Next:.A Primer on
Urban Painting, his first feature-length
film.

Following a brief recap of graffiti’s

origins in New York, complete with
excerpts from the classic graf movie
Style Wars, Aravena proceeds geo-
graphically, showcasing artists from
locations around the world, including
Brazil, Germany, and Japan. In both
style and substance, Next bears a
strong resemblance to Doug Pray’s
Scratch (2001). Both graffiti and
DJing—the topic of Pray’s film—are
frequently encountered but little-
understood cultural practices, largely
(though not exclusively) associated
with hip hop.

Formally, both films explore their
subjects through a combination of
interviews with artists and footage of
these artists in action. But whereas
Scratch was able to successfully weave a
narrative from its raw material, draw-
ing comparisons between sub-groups
as well as tracing an overall historical
development, Next seems to lack any
unifying thesis. The film just jumps
from place to place, providing a visual
-_posteard of a city or country before
moving on to the next section.

Between the regional segments, as
a sort of visual punctuation, Aravena
inserts footage of paint being manu-
factured in a Montana Gold factory.
Montana Gold is to spraypaint what
Nike is to sneakers: high-priced, highly
sought-after, and available in a wide
variety of colours. While the repeated
image of the factory hints at the
appropriation and commodification of
graffiti, this potentially interesting
topic is never explicitly broached in
the film.

At other times, though, Aravena’s
lack of commentary works in his
favor. When he showcases graffiti
artists at work, or a city space com-
pletely covered in paint, he wisely lets
the images speak for themselves.
Instead of using voiceovers, Aravena

compliments these sequences with
gritty beats, courtesy of DJs like
Diplo, Sixtoo, and others, and artful
image layout, often presenting multi-
ple frames and angles at the same
time. During a sequence in Sao Paulo,
Brazil for example, he juxtaposes a
walking shot of a graffiti-filled alley
with close shots of each individual
piece, conveying a sense of the entire
space while simultaneously allowing
the viewer to linger on certain details.

In addition to its international
focus, Next should be commended for
showing how graffiti’s history extends
far beyond the boundaries of hip hop
culture. While the two have become
inextricably intertwined in contempo-
rary pop culture—to the point where
a hat or hoodie with a graf style on it
serves to signify how “down” some-
body is—the film presents several
alternative influences and sources.
French artist Psykoze points out 19th-
century tags in the catacombs of Paris,
while Montreal’s own Other talks
about Jack London carving his name
on freight trains. Aravena himself, via
a Timothy Leary epigraph, suggests an
even earlier precursor: cave painting.

Whatever its flaws, Next contains
plenty of flat-out amazing scenes that
almost justify the price of admission
on their own. Watching an Amsterdam
artist unroll a canvas tagged by NYC
legends Dondi and Zephyr, handling it
as reverently as an archeologist would
Egyptian papyrus, or seeing Japanese
writer Zys execute his whirlwind
throw-ups, splattering centrifugal cir-
cles of paint around his tag, perfectly
transmits the film’s sense of wide-eyed
wonder.

Ultimately, both the strengths and
weaknesses of Nex¢ are encapsulated
in its subtitle: A Primer on Urban
Painting. “Primer” can mean either
“that which serves as a first means of
instruction” or “the substance or mix-
ture used by painters for the prepara-
tory coat.” The film fully embodies
both senses of the word: While it
serves as a good introduction to the
world of street art, it’s hard not to feel
as though Aravena is only laying a
foundation, leaving it up to someone
else to build on his work and make a
truly inspired film about graffiti.
Check out www.nextthemovie.com for
more info.