Barter Bob defaced my art

[brody]

He tagged my art at Burning Man this year with an advertisement for his theme camp in Center Camp. From what I can tell, he's a long-time Burner and should know better than to deface art. (There was no indication on my art piece that this was an OK place to place graffiti).

This post brought to you by the department of Recourse Through Public Shaming. Thanks for listening.



p.s. I'm not pissed. I'm actually surprised that no one else tagged it. But I'm all about respecting art, and this is Not Ok behavior and something I think should be addressed in the community when it happens.

[Miles]

why bob? :?

[ibdave]

Yes Bob, why??

[ygmir]

yeah, what about Bob?

[rodiponer]

I like Public Shaming.

[C.f.M.]

Gosh darn it, another thing on my list of ARGH I can't believe I missed it.

You and your art.

[joeyhotsauce]

Brody, your art seems to be a 2x4, I say we find Bob and string him up.

[brody]

Brody, your art seems to be a 2x4, I say we find Bob and string him up.

I took a photo of the leg of the art piece that Barter Bob defaced, so it could be read close-up. So yes, the bit you're looking at happens to be a 2x4. An overall shot of the piece would not be big enough to read his defacement.

Are you implying that because this part of my art was a 2x4 piece of wood, that it was somehow OK to deface?

[bradtem]

I've run into tagging and defacement a few times now. The first was many years ago, but it was on the back of one of my walls, so annoying but tolerable. Of late they have moved to being much worse. Here's my phone booth 2 years ago:

http://pic.templetons.com/cgi-bin/imget ... G_1779.JPG

And here's my ATM wall before I took it down:

http://pic.templetons.com/cgi-bin/imget ... G_1778.JPG

Makes you sick. I guess the dickheads feel that since these sort of things get graffiti in the big city it should be done here. And that since the temple has memorials on it they should climb up and write non-memorial messages in bright pink.

I don't want to go all "Burning man was better last year" on you, but there is indeed a new type of person in the city these days.

And then there's the pricks with the stickers. They want to leave their spam everywhere so they put on stickers with heavy glue onto art installations, art cars, you name it. Goo Gone is a new thing you have to add to your playa packing list. No, I don't want to advertise your camp or DJ, but it still would have been nice of you to ask.

[Grasshoppa]

This is Barter Bob talking through Grasshoppa: "Sorry. My bad. I must have been high on Coke. (I drank like 11 of them that day.) Ooopsie. Ok, I have to go pee now..."

[brody]

But it seems like it's someone else reminding Barter Bob where his forgotten things are, not Barter Bob himself. I know they still shouldn't deface your art, but I think Bob was being written *to*, not writing the note himself.

Nope. Barter Bob's Forgotten Supplies (or whatever) is the name of his camp. He runs a thing that looks like a junkie flea market where you can pick up random items.

A campmate of mine met Barter Bob sitting on my art piece one morning, and he introduced himself as Barter Bob and gestured to the graffiti, indicating that he was THAT particular Barter Bob. (I guess he liked hanging out at my art? It was a pretty comfortable spot)

If this hadn't happened and been related to me, I would be less-likely to publicly shame him. But the tag + this evidence = SHAME ON BOB.

[CatsFun]

Regarding the 'graffiti occurs in cities' thought...

This was my first burn, and on my second night there, all my stuff was taken from my bike basket (but not my bike!)--headlamp, goggles, camera, etc....and they left me some MOOP in return.

I was pissed at first, but finally made peace with the idea that a Metropolis is a City, and every city has crime.

Many people had presented Burning Man to me as some kind of Utopia, but it's not--it's wonderful & magical & surreal and many other things, but it is imperfect due to the fact that it's populated with people.

[Bob]

I was mildly offended when the Cafe back in 2001 paid airfare etc. to have Banksy deface the back side of the counter area. Plus staff time to put up the 60-odd feet of plywood & apply primer first, and have the staff photographer document it.

So, take your low water marks w/ a grain of alkali.

[Bob]

BTW, I'm not *that* Bob. Vandalism sucks.

[unjonharley]

BTW, I'm not *that* Bob. Vandalism sucks.

This Bob is just an old sofa that fell off some truck along the hwy of life..

[theCryptofishist]

I was mildly offended when the Cafe back in 2001 paid airfare etc. to have Banksy deface the back side of the counter area. Plus staff time to put up the 60-odd feet of plywood & apply primer first, and have the staff photographer document it.

Now SFMOMA has him defacing the streets and sidewalks of the City.

Of course,

close to 2000 years old.
(And there are petroglyphs much older.)

[masho]

That's a shame Brody. I wonder how the temple designers felt?

I get the impression that there are a lot of participants who feel that writing on or tagging lumber is a burning man tradition a la the temple. Frankly we expected it to happen to the Helix and looked at it as a type of participation. I'd imagine some even find it flattering. In the end it didn't really bother us, though I thought some of the larger temple tags missed the point and came off as self serving defacement advertising ie..."X camp is the best". While some of the large temple tags weren't my favorite they were a simple form of expression.

[unjonharley]

Art damaging should be an ejectable ofence

[fbcota]

Its funny, last year I wanted people to tag my art, but we got almost no takers. This year, we covered our art in illustrations and thought it would be safe, but we had one person "add" to it. Apparently he was very appologetic when he realized it was not meant to be tagged.

I think a simple note letting people know if its ok or not goes a long way.

[Psycho]

I saw this sculpture very early on before there was much writing on it... I thought it was kind of funny that 6, 7, 8+ would be trying to climb it at once. I remember yelling out that it had a limit 4 at a time. Someone sarcastically said I should put up a sign saying that (possibly assuming it was my sculpture), and I pointed to the repeated '4 at a time' warnings painted at various points along the steps... He responded with 'Oh, I thought someone just wrote that there to be funny...' I suppose once there was a lot more writing on it, it didn't really stand out as a real warning... (Which I'm assuming it was since it was there from the beginning, and the structure was a little wobbly with just two people on it...)

I guess another side of the issue of burners assuming it's okay to tag some art, many also assume that anything written on the art is just that- graffiti to be largely ignored...

[masho]

Thanks for trying Psycho. Let's face it, reading is a dieing art.

Please note that the fluorescent orange wording was spray painted stencil on the inside face of the 2x4's every 5' in elevation. There is no way anyone could have tagged it from the outside

That said, the Helix was capable of holding more than four people comfortably. "Overdesign" everyone said, so we did. Yes it got shakier as more people climbed up. With all the cantilevers the structure behaved like a spring, nailed to the playa. Load it at the top yes it will bend a bit.

Anyway, to reiterate we weren't upset by the graffiti in the least, I was just trying to say that "lumber" in specific seemed to be tagged. You didn't see any tags on the Harveywood sign, or Bliss Dance, or "Home" etc....because they had more refined skins.

[Psycho]

I suspect knowing that it's going to be burned might add to that as well... If you know the sculpture is going to be destroyed, maybe people don't feel so bad about marking it up... (Although I don't know if that applies to the Brody's art...)

This was my first year, so I don't know if this was normal, but after a few days there was graffiti all over the Man structure. Most of it is actually interesting stuff to read (People saying thanks, and talking about how much fun they are having, etc).

The Honeycomb piece I remember seeing had a lot of stuff written on it too...

[fbcota]

Masho: I loved your art, great fun to climb and it just seemed to pop. I think your right about the surface, we stained our art this year and it kept the graffiti down to 1 person who made an honest mistake.

[masho]

Masho: I loved your art, great fun to climb and it just seemed to pop. I think your right about the surface, we stained our art this year and it kept the graffiti down to 1 person who made an honest mistake.

Thanks Fb, much appreciated.