What Julia Made

Can we get some ketchup over here? No, fair enough, jam with everything then. Jam on this, good morning, a morning greeting with your jam is always polite don’t you think? What do you think? Where were we? Half way through a pack of sugar-free polo mints somewhere on the edge of some town on the edge of a desert somewhere near somewhere else that isn’t doomed?  “Cut the wordery and review some music” cried yesterday’s owl, “that or just put some damn links up so we can click on them and get the hell out off this doomed page”. Something very sad about this doomed village in Belgium, what doomed village I hear you cry?  Street art often finds itself growing on the walls of doomed places, fractured inner cities, the walls of faded lives, once proud factories, canal walls that were once alive with the flow of industrial life blood, art reclaiming streets from assault of the advertisers, the shoe pimps and coca-cola pushers, art on the streets, on the walls, it revitalizes, it reclaims, it delights, it provokes (okay it often bores, lot of rathe boring street art out there), the good art adds a smile of colour where once there was just decay… Doel still feels doomed though, seven hundred years of life wiped out and all the street art in the world can’t lift it, maybe its because there no one there now, the place looks like it has given up (the people’s republic of Leytonstonia was alive with art, activism, people and everything else right up until the very last minute of the M11 link-road protests) , Doel looks like a very say beaten-down ghost town that even Roa can’t bring back to life Here’s three photos we blatantly stole off Chris Staring, writer of that recent article on that oft covered Belgium ghost town that now doesn’t have long left…

“There are still a handful of residents who call Doel home, and continue to fight for its survival, and encourage artists to come and decorate the abandoned houses with colorful murals. Some of the remaining eccentric citizens also contribute by erecting sculptures, folk art, gardens, and “Save Doel” banners and signs, as well as informational posters throughout the village….” further reading.

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This just in via Upper Space – For those more interested in art, social and political theory, we will be releasing a selection of essays online as part of our ‪#‎Politika‬ programme. The first instalment is an essay from Bill Posters, founder of Brandalism, entitled ‘Advertising Shits In Your Head’:

What’s Hockney on about today? not had time ot read it yet,