144 pages Edited by Kanardo 23,5 x 16,5 cm Language: English & French Paperback Publisher: Artifacts 2004
Fifty-three contributors, gathered from Barcelona to Rio, New York to Moscow, Rotterdam to Perth. The editors are explicit about what the book is not: no encyclopaedia, no reference work — just a snapshot of what was happening worldwide, and a pot of paint thrown at the window of the modern-art galleries. The range is deliberately unruly: stencils, stickers, screen-printed and photocopied posters, hand-painted pieces, welded metal, stencilled bathroom tiles, and one campaign conducted through the pages of the telephone directory. Kevin Dresser (Brooklyn) supplies the cover, painted on derelict vehicles; Lucy McLauchlan of Beat 13 (Birmingham) faces him inside. A closing directory on pp. 95–96 lists websites, international magazines and books then current on the subject.
An unusually candid document of the moment street art was still being defined by the people doing it. The introduction concedes that the post-graffiti movement is crowded with hopeless cases and copycats, and argues that this doesn't matter — the real practitioners develop techniques and have something to say. Published not by an art house, and announced as the first of a Minibook series that would otherwise be devoted to board culture: a snowboard publisher's brief detour into the street, which is exactly why the selection looks like nothing else from 2004.
