by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Here’s a stumper - if a graffiti artist takes can to canvas, not train car, and hangs it in a gallery, is it still graffiti? Even if the visual code of hip hop graf is intact, the hallowed laws of impermanence and reclaiming one’s turf have been compromised. So what do we call it now?

“‘Post-graffiti’ is a term I could get comfortable with,” says local filmmaker Pablo Aravena. “Mind you, that’s what they called it in the early ’80s, when they started putting graf into galleries.” The working title of Aravena’s current documentary project is Next: A Primer on Urban Painting, suggesting another possible term for what the graf tradition has evolved into since its dawn in the Bronx almost three decades ago.

“I’m trying to call it painting, period. I asked Lee Quinones about that and he said, ‘We were always painters.’” Quinones, so you know, was the central figure in the classic old-school hip hop flick Wild Style, bombing cars (sorry, painting trains) and wrestling with the lure of big gallery green. He’s one of several graffiti “elders” that Aravena has already interviewed and filmed in action. Others include Futura and the great Doze Green.

Aravena has also snagged the next generation in the likes of Miami’s Inkheads, NYC/North Carolina ruralizers Barnstormers and of course our own handsome and talented Heavyweight boys. “It started as a film on Heavyweight, following them around. As I started doing more research, this whole global scope popped up. The idea was to talk with the leading artists in the major cities around the world who are working in this area now. What I’m really focusing on is, where is it now?”

Where it is is galleries, concert halls and music conventions as well as the familiar trains and alley walls, as graf becomes a spectator sport. “It’s about process more than the final product. It’s directly tied to the music, the visual equivalent of remix and sample culture.”

The younger set aim to push the legitimacy and artistic freedoms of the genre to new heights, and the old-schoolers are pushing right along with them. “If you look at these paintings, it’s not what you see on the street anymore. It’s become more sophisticated. It’s natural that an artist evolves over 30 years.”

So far, Aravena has shot 22 hours of footage (a third of film, by his guess) in Miami, NYC, London and Montreal. Following a list of “writers” suggested by those he’s already spoken with, he’s now eyeing Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Spain, Brazil and Japan. The ultimate goal is a theatrically released full-length feature. “I think it deserves that, because to me, it’s the art of now, of the turn of the century. Imagine hanging out with the Impressionists before Impressionism got big. This is a movement that is arising, and I wanted to grab the moment before the academics and media jumped on it, and I wanted the artists themselves to define it.” :

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