The Philippine Online Chronicles

This is the second part (you can see the first part here) of my interview with Louie and Michael, members of the street art group KST/Pilipinas Street Plan, when I found them uncorking their unique kind of artwork near my home. You can read part one here.

Just out of curiousity, I heard a rumor that (famous graffiti artist and prankster) Banksy did some stuff here. Do you know anything about that?

Banksy? There was an individual who was fabricating Banksy works here. We know him. Nakaka-badtrip. He imitates Banksy’s style so people mistake his works for Banksy’s.

Is he a member of your group?

No, no he’s not.

We respect Banksy, but we’re trying to do something different. We don’t... how do you say this... we don’t try to be deep. It’s okay to try to get people thinking, but it’s also okay to try and create something that people are not going to fully understand. That’s closer to what we’re trying to do.

Banksy kind of uses art as a tool...

Well, that Banksy... he’s very smart. And besides, he lives in a first-world country. We live in a third-world country. Can you do that sort of thing in a third-world country? You’d just put off your audience. Isolate them. This way [points at the mural they are working on], people just go, “Wow, nice colors...” and so on. It’s understandable, people like it. Banksy’s work... mostly educated people would get it. First-world people.

This painting of yours, by the way, is it commissioned?

No.

But the property owner knows about it?

Yes.

How does that work? You contact the property owner...

Yes, we contact them. Just because we do this sort of thing doesn’t mean we don’t follow rules. We respect the wall. Some walls look nice, you shouldn’t paint on them. This one’s plain, kind of dark, and lots of people pass by here. So we thought we’d ask permission to paint over it. The owner agreed.

This wall’s maybe forty feet long by ten feet high. Is that an average size for you?

It’s a little above average.

And how often do you get to do this sort of thing?

Uh, it depends on the availability of paint. We don’t have any sponsors or anything. Everything is paid for out-of-pocket. But we’d like to do it as often as possible.

On average—would you say once a month?

More than that. Some weeks we get to do it everyday. As long as we have paint.

What’s the longest you’ve gone without a new project?

For us, maybe one month, two months feels like forever (laughs). It feels like you’re gonna die. It’s like an addiction.

How many rejections do you get before someone agrees to let you paint on their property?

Let’s put it at seven rejections out of ten requests.\

Thirty percent? That’s not too bad.

Not bad at all, if you ask us. But we still “street”, we still target illegal spots. But we don’t hit houses or anything like that. Those are off-limits. We usually go for vacant lots. Ugly spots. Places we can paint without... basically we still respect property.

How long have you two been doing this?

About four years.

How did you get into the street art scene?

We’d just see each other on the street. We’d ask around, ask who works in this or that place. And also via the internet. Websites like 12ozprophet, places like that. That’s mostly how we find each other. Also, word-of-mouth. One of the leaders knew a friend of mine, and so on.

Are things mostly done via the internet these days?

Yes, and that’s one of the sad things about it. We started painting for the masses, not to be famous on the web. What some guys do, we call it “pogi paint”, they paint just so they can post it on websites later, cater to people who can afford an internet connection. They aren’t doing it for the masses.

Almost takes the “street” out of the street art, doesn’t it?

Yes it does. For our part, we post pictures of our stuff to the web, and we pass along stuff from other people, but we aren’t in it for just that. In this age of street art, it’s like everyone’s an “internet bomber” (laughs). We aren’t like that. We got together personally in the streets. We’d approach one another and ask, “Hello, sir, I’ve seen you painting around here.” There’s a personal touch.

Have you had any problems with the MMDA?

We do. Even when we’re doing a legal session, we’d have them tell us, “You can’t do that.” and  “Where’s your permit?” They’d tell us to go to the mayor’s office to get a permit, even though we were working on private property with the consent of the owner. There are a lot of epal MMDAs, and there are also a lot of supportive ones, and a lot of ones that don’t care. We most prefer the ones that don’t care (laughs).

But things don’t usually reach the police station, do they?

Sometimes they do. But that’s the risk you take. Sometimes you’re gonna get caught, that’s all. That’s the reason some of us decide to lie low for a while, when things get too hot. But things aren’t as bad in the Philippines compared to some other countries where they really hate street art.

Do you guys interact with other similar groups?

Of course. You make relationships just like in real life. But there are always going to be insecure groups. For example, we’d create a certain piece, and it’s fancy, and they would destroy it. Paint over it or write on it or something. And naturally we’d take revenge. It’s a bad thing to do but you need to do it. Then they would badmouth us, and it kind of becomes a rivalry, which is an ugly thing. Back when the graff scene was in its infancy, everyone got along, everyone was friendly. Now there are a lot of haters out there, it’s a mess.

How long before you finish this piece?

It’s a large piece, we’ll probably finish tomorrow morning. There’s a theme to it—Aztec. Kind of a road to El Dorado. Because the name of the subdivision is Golden City, so we thought we’d make a play on that. Aztec with a modern style.

Did you make a plan or sketch of this on paper first?

No sir. It’s all freestyle. We did some research for the Aztec theme, visualize how we’d want it to look, do some research for the math in the lettering.

And that pretty much concluded our interview. We had lost ourselves in watching the artists work, layering the colors and highlights with deft movements of their aerosol spraycans, which by now were growing in number at their feet. Soon after I bid them farewell and left them to their work.

I crossed the street towards a nearby tricycle terminal and asked one of the drivers there what he thought. He seemed quite skeptical about the whole thing. “It all looks very nice,” he said, “but the question is, what does it mean?” The other onlookers seemed to share his confusion. Perhaps if the KST crew had decided to paint a rural landscape with roosters and carabaos and a couple of bathing beauties, or popular anime characters, or a Heavy Metal pinup cover, no such questioning would have arisen. But then the viewers would also have missed an opportunity to interact with something new and unfamiliar. “What does it mean?” isn’t a bad question to ask every so often, in fact we could do with more of it. Pilipinas Strees Plan and KST, mission accomplished.

[Image source: Photographs by the author. Copyright holder/s maintain appropriate rights.]

You may contact the author at ayonkay-macoy[at]yahoo.com.