February 21, 2005
graffito 6
I found this stencil/graffito on the sidewalk a block away from the College Park metro station.
To explain: it's an old-fashioned dance map, showing the foot positions for the dance, across three sidewalk squares. There is a word associated with each sidewalk square, three words in all. They say "DANCE . . . AGAINST . . . EMPIRE."
So some kind of activist sidewalk rhetoric. But cleverly done, something that gets you to stop and look and read (though the letters are hard to read now, after a recent snow storm). And who wouldn't want empires to fall, and in just such a way? By dancing?
Thinking it might have been intended as part of the game, I went ahead and danced the steps. It felt a little bit like playing hopscotch; I didn't recognize the dance from the steps (there are not many ballroom dances I do know).
My only critique is that such street art should not be wasted. There should have been a URL as part of the stencil. Help people follow up rhetoric (clever though it is) with action. Show me where I can dance away empire. Give me a URL...
Posted by jeb at February 21, 2005 11:43 PM | TrackBack