Making A Splash

New York blogs have recently been abuzz about the activities of the splasher, a cretin who is going around the city throwing paint over street art and posting pseudointellectual notices nearby.

The story made it into the New York Times this weekend, where Alex Mindlin reported that the splasher has been defacing New York’s street art for more than a year.

So far, most reported attacks have been in Williamsburg and SoHo, but they have been in the Prospect Heights neighborhood too. This one is on the corner of Dean Street and Flatbush Avenue.

Here, a Gothamist reader puts the above vandalism in context:

The image that you destroyed above is of a woman that is involved in a TRUE struggle for autonomy and liberation from Capital. This portrait made of a woman who lives in Oaxaca is being used to raise consciousness about the uprising and movement of the APPO, (Popular Assembly for the People of Oaxaca). Some prints of this were recently returned to the women in their villages, and pasted up (I dare you to travel there and splash paint on them) The point is that you as a viewer reduce the image to be something to consumed and not something of beauty or of something to learn from. YOU decontextualize them and make them into nothing. Just like your actions have become. I look forward to the further attention your actions will recieve from the history makers at the NY Times this sunday, it will be YOU, and your actions that will be turned into just another movement. And consumed you are, one dollar an issue,read online for free or at a coffee shop.

You piss me off, you insult true revolutionaries working for self-determination that suffer real consequences. And you do it all within the safety of your home, in front of the computer, or at night on the street with a bucket of oops paint.

I find no integrity in your actions.

This is the last time I waste breath reacting to your senseless acts, because you just upped the ante.

-k