Cyop & Kaf spent one week in town, the sun was shining and everything was in the right place, (all right, everything but me, but that’s another story) they painted here and there with their beautiful attitude: here’s the wall, here’s the ladder, buckets of paint, brushes, we’re off in 1 hour

they’re probably the only artists i’m not ashamed to tell i have no permissions when i show them a wall to paint. if it makes any sense, they’re keeping it real, still in 2011, and they’re happily far from all the museum/institutions bullshit. They still paint illegally, they still do it under a beautifully spontaneous urge to just go out and do it

sometimes though, one hour is not enough, and it can easily occurr that you bump into some cronically angry wall owner while you’re still painting it
he will show up screaming from inside the car (windows rolled up) get out and threaten you with death until you’re done buffing what you’ve just painted. that’s pretty much how it went

even worst, next day, you wake up totally frustrated and realize that the only solution is to go find another wall to give it another try.

there you are, painting the same drawing again, chatting, having good fun.
this place looks way more abandoned then the first one and if i remember it right, the neighbours asked us to paint something on this wall last year.
it all feels quiet, so quiet! way too quiet for our standards…

and here he comes, this guy on his early 40′s, ready to reel off his repertory of questions and commonplaces, such as: do you have the authorization to do it? do you know you can be sued for this? you know i might call the police? he got as far as asking us personal details and taking some pictures of us while we were still painting to have some kind of evidence that it was us doing it

to get to the point, this guy was the owner of the place being restored in the back, after some clumsy talking he finally got aggressive too and he threaten us again into buffing the painting, he would have called the police and sued us. that’s were we lost hope and buffed the piece. at least it was clear to everybody that we did it just to stop hearing his nonsense, wich was clearly based on the dumbest rhetoric of legality ever.

now, i know i might sound frustrated, and yes, i am afterall, it’s not for the paintings though, it’s this private property state of mind that i cant seem to understand fully. i’ve seen it driving people really crazy.

let me be clear on this, of course, the first guy was 100% right kicking our asses for painting his wall with no permission, but still, if you see things for what they really are, we’re talking about a shithole abandoned apartment where you’re not even living in, and a dusty old fucked up wall on the side. i mean, easing your brain up from the obsessive property thinking, itd be obvious to realize that it was just a painting. you can, of course, but you dont really need to show up as the OWNER and scream at people. you can even consider showing up as a person and try to talk to this people before …not to mention the second guy, the big fan of legality. he was talking like a lawyer would, he should just be re-educated

but then again, we’re the fucked up ones, i guess im wrong again

you with me on this one?
here you can find a monograph of Cyop & Kaf, 160 pages, 10 years of being wrong