The latest issue of Stir magazine came out today on the topic of commoning in the city and features this illustration of mine. It represents my ideal urban store cupboard packed full of preserves made from food foraged or grown in community growing sites.
As a volunteer at a community orchard in a public park in Hackney, the most common question people ask when they visit is, "how are you going to stop people from taking all this stuff?" Just last weekend, I encountered a woman who asked this very question. She then explained to me that her granddaughters love rhubarb crumble and I convinced her (after much effort) to take a bunch of it so she could make their favorite treat. Even
when permission is explicitly granted, it still contradicts everything we are
taught about private property and getting anything for free in our
current system.
This is a nod to the sense of naughtiness that so many people feel about taking what's right under their noses and how when they push through that fear, they open up a world of new possibilities.
Much of what bothers me about the street art scene is very similar to what bothers me about the riots that have just happened in my neighborhood. The dick swinging, the macho aggression, the half-assed politics and the consumerism lurking beneath it all.
When the riot started in Hackney, I hopped a fence into an off-limits construction site in East London where they are building the Olympic stadium. But I wasn't there to cause any trouble or do anything illegal. I was there to pick ripe, delicious blackberries. It's a site I often go to forage. Two weeks earlier, I picked mulberries and some dyer's chamomile for dying wool. It was then that I spotted these lovely anonymous stencils.
It's been a long time but hopefully worth the wait. Introducing Pivo the street artist and her project to help the people of London rediscover the lost art of empathy. There's something really exciting about making one off work and handing it over to the world. These photographs will be the only evidence that this painting ever existed in a few weeks.
So many seeds fail to germinate but we can still hope.
