Spacecraft has Jumped the Shark

As eggheads, we love to study all forms of communication in public spaces. We often find ourselves on the trails of artists, writers, and taggers. Consequently, we are frequently three days late and a few dollars short. We don't mind being so horribly behind the cultural curve as long as the chase thrills us. We like to look at street markings from a critical, aesthetic, and informed point-of-view before making boneheaded blanket generalizations like, "graffiti bad!".

So when started noticing stickers, we were excited even more by the evolution and change in the mark, or brand. The painted snowcats were replaced almost exclusively with stickers. We liked them because they changed in size, shape, color, and subject. Despite the common element of the snowcat, there were solid backgrounds, striped red-brown backgrounds, striped green backgrounds, and striped purple backgrounds, for example. They also ranged in size from tiny 1-by-3 inches to giant 6-by-16 inches. Eventually, the word Spacecraft started to appear on the stickers. But more fun than that was when we started running into stickers that were less about the snowcat as the main focus and more about other visual elements and art. In Spacecraft's more advanced work, then, there were mythic figures, there was typography, and there were even bunnies. In general, there was cool shit.

Moreover, we were highly impressed with Spacecraft's prolific means of production. That should have been our red flag. And then there were snowboards. That should have been our second red flag.

So several weeks ago when --speaking of being steps behind-- we finally discovered that Spacecraft was a local snowboarding outfit that sold shit, we were a bit disappointed. Suddenly the fact that we and our informants had seen their work from SoDo all the way to Snoqualmie (snowboarders, get it?) became less cool. Rather than a person or people throwing up pretty stuff for the hell of it, we figured they probably had a "street team", or the equivalent informal army of devoted patrons plastering surfaces haphazardly with their brand.

We suppose that we are all for subverting the traditional means of marketing which leave room only for players with big money. But this whole affair still came off with a nagging feeling of ***stretch*** oh, they're selling shit ***yawn*** rather than about it being gratuitous street decoration. ***zzzzzzzz*** Street art is as much defined by intent as well as medium and method. We find the Selling of Shit a much less compelling motive than the creation of gratuitous art.

But even as advertising, Spacecraft fails. Those who aren't already in the know will not realize the product advertised, so new customers aren't necessarily being turned onto the brand. We didn't become aware of it until we saw some wheat-pasted posters in Post Alley pointing us to a website. So the mark is more of a territorial pissing. And we aren't so much interested anymore in tracking taggers' urine scent as much as we are in discovering new artistic work, methods, and design.

Oh, sure sure. Their web site talks all about artists and ***zzzzzz***. Point is: we miss finding neat stuff like this. All we have been seeing lately is simple, mono-color stickers placed randomly. The parties responsible haven't even been cool enough to think about placement. In the dim recesses of our transgressive past, Seattlest did a little bit of gratuitous, self-aggrandizing stickering. As we remember it, we always thought about placement, even sacrificing quantity of markings for the quality of placement. Shape up, people, and exploit space creatively instead of crapping all over it!

So our knee-jerk reaction upon realizing this story was to burn our collected samples. We'll still keep them; however, we have become less enchanted with tracking Spacecraft. In fact, we've moved on to harvesting prettier stickers from another operation in town. But we've become a tad disillusioned with stickers, especially vinyl stickers. Why must the parties responsible always be selling something on the side, no matter how nominal?

As to the topic at hand, Spacecraft has been resting on its laurels. We haven't seen anything beyond old sticker designs popping up in new places. Where's the innovation that produced the very first painted pieces?

Not that we are advocating you stop, Spacecraft. Like Fox Mulder, we want to believe. Therefore, if you are going to continue, please follow the graffiti aesthetic: evolve and produce some new and visually compelling work. At the moment, the work has fallen to the level of toys and taggers.