i got published in the NZ graff/hip hop mag back2basics
no money, but they only edited a little and its so nice to see your words in print...
photos by a friend of mine travis argus
and if you cant read it, heres the words for ya...
Last Stop Franga
The moon is high and turns the road blue as giant cyclone fencing separates us from the sculpture garden that is the Brooklyn train yards, on the last stop of the Frankston line out of Melbourne in Victoria.
There is a bend in the fence around the size of a crouching body, and barren dirt paddocks surrounded by factories where giant monoliths of wrecked carriages loom in the semi darkness.
Hulks of steel that once carried people to work or to meet their lovers at midnight, now lay stacked together disembowelled on their sides, like pieces of Lego from some toddler giant, torn windows and shards of glass a testament to his strength.
The guts of metal and wiring spill out and cover the dirt like entrails. In this age of rapid technology and industrial waste, these toys have become a playground again, but now, for an altogether different kind of youth. Now they are a peaceful museum where trains go to die, hushed and streaked with metallic sunsets where the monochrome trains burst into rainbows.
They are exiled here, to be dismantled by Sims metal, into categories- heavy metals and all other refuse, two piles.
Slashes of colour peek out from the twisted metal carnage, soft rounded lines of design with sparkle seem to overtake the dead trains and make them live again, as a new kind of canvas not bound by convention or boundaries. This absence of written rules is what makes these places so special, there are unspoken codes that you choose to learn, or you choose to deny.
Hidden from the public eye, from art schools and galleries, whichever crew your in or whoever’s side your on, there is so much creativity and wonder in these yards it’s hard to believe they haven’t made headlines already.
People come here to paint, to marvel at other’s styles, and to paint.
Prepare yourself with weapons of art and a hoody, and head out to the wastelands of the city, with motivation purely to test your skills and create some more wicked colour in a grey world, and join the unranked army of modern art ninjas, who deem the streets, buildings, and waste of economy theirs for the remaking.
Public discourse in the form of Graffitti that began in the neandethal caves has found brothers and sisters in the far reaches of the world, in the factories of Germany and in the suburban wastelands of Australia alike. The geography and the message itself may change but the urge to get up, be heard, has not.
Giant lashed ladie’s eyes peer bigger than life from the rubble, arrows are framed in neon green and dangling wires. Long tunnels made from sideways carriages that run four high and four deep make use of the term art-itechture
And the crunch of glass underfoot seems louder out here. A flock of feral sheep graze and watch in awe as the graff kids and metal workers deface and dismantle the trains. Ripped seats and old adverts covered with tattoos of marker, from scrawled tags to throwies to giant pieces the length of two carriages, characters and faces tell stories of people, real people, who lived and learnt and had something to say, enough to come out here and damn well say it.
And yeah its dangerous, and yeah its trespassing, and yeah we’ve got more pressing obligations like homework or jobs or family. But when you step back, with the stars your only witness, and walk back into the darkness, a smile slowly spreads. And you know, that somewhere in this world, somehow despite what everyone often tells you, you have a voice. You have made your mark. You are there.
