With backing from Fab Five Freddy, *ecko unltd.'s attorney Daniel Perez of radio host Ron Kuby's law firm Kuby & Perez, representatives from the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and graffiti artists including Pink, Ket, Cycle, Smith, Crash, Tats Crew and others, Ecko announced at a press conference on Thursday [August 18] that he would seek an emergency order requiring New York City to reinstate a street permit for the previously authorized event.
In conjunction with the promotion of Ecko's upcoming video game, "Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure," which features Talib Kweli as the voice of the main character, a graffiti artist named Trane, the festival is slated to take over Manhattan's 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, from noon to dusk. Ten 48-foot-long by 8-foot-high replicas of New York City transit blue-bird subway cars - once the chosen canvas for New York City-based graffiti artists - will be transformed into contemporary urban works of art by 20 renowned graffiti artists including the "Bronx bomber and destroyer," COPE2 and T-Kid, who got his start writing on trains in 1974.
Standing in front of one of those subway car mock-ups at Mark Ecko Enterprises, Perez dismissed the city's claims that passerby and potential graffiti artists would believe that the exhibit encourages illegal graffiti. "I think we'd all agree," he said, "this is not a real train."
While Ecko's permit was granted on July 18, New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke out against the event, citing its potential to promote graffiti in New York City, and the permit was revoked, not to be reinstated unless Ecko and his team agree not to paint any canvas that looks like a mock train. "Like trans fats and cigarettes," Perez said of the Mayor, "he wanted to make art a campaign issue."
"I do not condone illegal activity," Ecko said. "But I can't stand here today and say that I condone censorship."
In an effort to prove his good intentions in putting on the event, Ecko hired a security guard for each artist, commissioned barricades to be placed around each canvas, and planned to place tarps around the canvas to avoid defacing the street with even one drop of paint.
When the designer first found out that, despite his efforts to prove that the event would not condone illegal activity, the city was planning to fight him on his permit for the event, he posted an open letter to New York City on his website.
"At its core, this is an event designed to celebrate an art form born from the streets of New York over two decades ago as a means of creative self expression, allowing the public a unique chance to experience the workmanship and skill that go into creating a piece of art fine enough to hang on the walls of any traditional gallery or museum," Ecko wrote.
"I am well aware that drawing graffiti in public places is a crime, and I do not condone or encourage it," he continued. "At the same time, however, graffiti is a legitimate and historical part of the great art history of our city. The visual dialect is alive and well, and contrary to the opinion of certain elected officials, just because you draw on paper that way doesn't mean that you are writing on walls. That is the dialect that these artists and others like them dream through, that informed their creative energy so early on and helped them to go on to become a muralist, a film maker, a story teller, and even a clothing designer."
Ecko went on to explain that he would continue planning the event, "as we have for nearly 10 months," and speaking with the "proper authorities" to agree upon a means of hosting the event. He also mentioned that he had retained legal counsel "who will vigorously and zealously represent my First Amendment interests."
The NYCLU has stepped up to help represent Ecko's interests as well, calling the city's attention to a 1969 Supreme Court decision (Bradenburg v. Ohio), which said that "even advocacy that might possibly inspire unlawful conduct does not lose its First Amendment protection unless such expression 'is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action'... The sponsor of the exhibit has evinced no intention of advocatin gthat individuals engage in unlawful graffiti," wrote Art Eisenberg, Legal Director of the NYCLU in a letter to Bloomberg.
"This is not intended as a how-to," Ecko said. "This is a pop culture moment, not a criminal activity." If a federal judge decides to overturn Bloomberg's decision and allow the event to go on as scheduled, Ecko says, he would like to extend an invitation to the Mayor to attend the festival and "express his First Amendment right by picking up a spray can and painting a canvas with [him]."
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