*findthumb

A different thumbnail image for this video could not be found for findthumb request by maatc.

That was freaking awesome to the power of three gajillion. Would love a transcript of the police encounter...

worth reading his account of this (in english too) on his site:
http://www.alexandreorion.com/ossario/texts.html

it's flash so you'll have to click ARTIST REPORT to see it, i can't link direct to that, heck i can't even cutnpaste the text, damn i hate flash so bad.

This is in desperate need of a *requeue

Re-queueing this video for one more try; last queued Monday, September 24th, 2007 2:39am PDT - requeue requested by submitter maatc.

Anyone know what the music from this was? It reminds me of BT's 1.618.

From his site:

At dawn on July 13, 2006, I started work on an intervention in the Max Feffer tunnel joining Av. Europa and Cidade Jardim. The intervention was through a process of subtraction, scraping off layers of soot from vehicle exhaust built up on tunnel walls to produce images of human skulls.

Police checked us out several times during the early morning when I was working on "cleaning" the tunnel. However, as expected, they could not stop me drawing skulls in the tunnel. "Cleaning" is not a crime. What is a crime is the environmental damage caused by unashamed pollution. And, as also expected, the State did not let the matter rest there. There was only one way to prevent me "cleaning" my way, and that was for them to clean up too. And they did!

The intervention had reached 160 meters when São Paulo municipality started its own first cleaning operation there. However, contrary to my expectation, they did not clean the whole tunnel. What would really have prevented me continuing would have been their removing all the soot, which was the raw material used for the work. The State's intention was to just remove the intervention. They annulled the message by creating a huge clean area and leaving the rest of the sooty tunnel as it was. So this was another crime: censorship! lol...

But since the raw material was still there, I came back with more provocation on August 13th. After working for several nights, the intervention had reached around 120 meters, and the municipal team, complete with traffic department staff and the police turned up to clean the whole tunnel.

After that, every tunnel in the city was cleaned. After finishing work on Cidade Jardim, Rebouças was next, followed a number of other tunnels in the city. But they will all be dirty again in less than 4 months. It would be better to stop polluting instead of cleaning up.

Alexandre Orion
visual artist

"It would be better to stop polluting instead of cleaning up."

So true. Great artist.

It's so strange that videos like this can fall out of the queue, the system seems to be breaking down. What about all those videos from people who don't have requeueing power (me ) ?

Dang, that is awesome! That's an amazing thing he did. When I saw the police in the video, I was wondering how they could do anything to him since he was simply "cleaning." lol But glad to hear they did some cleaning, but couldn't agree more, stop the pollution first!

my new hero

the likelihood that good videos made it out of the queue and bad videos didn't seemed to be higher back when the only viewing mode was from newest to oldest.

I love how the police roll up several times throughout the night, because it just appears this guy is guilty. They even hang out for a while and discuss it, as if someone deep inside they really felt there could be a law somewhere on the books they could remeber and haul this guy off to the jail.

brillant idea, great effort, but still, boring video.

It's still graffiti, as much as if he had used chalk on a black wall because that can just as easily be removed. Adding or subtracting, the result is identical. The fact that he was subtracting doesn't wash with me.

That said, it's a fantastic direct action, and one that he can continue to do without fear of getting into legal troubles, or running out of canvas.

Great list of the "35 Greatest Works of Reverse Graffiti" over here:
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/35-greatest-works-of-reverse-graffiti/1949