Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > March > 16 > Entry
Keynote address: James Powderly
Date and time: Monday at 2 p.m
Speakers: Open source art evangelist and political activist James Powderly talks about his craft and his mission with Virgina Heffernan who write The Medium column for The New York Times Magazine.
The gist: The affable and slightly goofy Powderly started off by asking everyone in the audience to flip him off — and then he took a picture of it.
When asked if there was a politics to his technology-based art actions, Powerdely answered, “It’s not moral or immoral, it’s amoral.”
Indeed, if there was one point Powderly made during the somewhat cursory and scattered discussion with Heffernan, it’s that he doesn’t consider himself an artist - especially not an artist with a message.
“I’m a trickster,” he repeated again and again. “Only to the cops, I’m artist.”
Nor did Powderly profess an originality of intent, either. Everything he and his co-horts do by way laser tagging and creating open-source tech methods for graffiti, is nothing but a new medium for the creation of graffiti. “It’s all stolen directly from the trajectory of graffiti,” Powderly said.
And if he’s not an artist, he’s also certainly not a man with a specific political message to espouse either. Well except this: Open source equals free speech. And all he’s doing is providing the do-it-yourself high tech means to take the graffiti to a new level.
Still, Powderly gave a rambling recollection his experience this summer when hewas detained by Chinese authorities during the 2008 Summer Olympics while attempting to project the words “Free Tibet” on a building with laser beams.
Powderly quotes: “We say yes to everybody (who approaches us about a project). We’re a free speech organization.”
“I think graffiti should be illegal. If everybody is a transgressor, it’s bad — it’s Australian.”
“The trickster, the transgressor steps over the line constantly. We draw people in, and then step over our own boundary and show everyone how to do it themselves. The magician reveals his tricks and makes a hundred more magicians.”
“Can you guys guess what operating system I’m using?” (When his PC froze on a streaming video)
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