…#2 Eco-graffiti – new urban communication tools

After last week's " Green Graffiti and Movements ", we're continuing in the same vein with a focus on Reverse Graffiti or Clean Tagging in street and guerrilla marketing mode! Still in the same spirit but with a different concept: this time we're making art by cleaning up dirt! These concepts aren't new but unfortunately not well-known enough

An Artistic Means of Expression to Denounce Urban Pollution… and Create a Buzz

An art that consists of making clean with dirt - So out with the infamous highly toxic spray cans and in with the rags! In less figurative terms, this means graffiti artists cleaning dirty walls, sidewalks… with stencils, water, brushes, rags and compressors for the most heavily soiled areas… to create true eco-friendly works of art!

The benchmark in this field: Brazilian Alexandre Orion

He uses reverse graffiti to convey messages, such as alerting people to the ever-increasing threat of pollution – his iconic graffiti: his depiction of human skulls in a São Paulo tunnel…

The good news is that these famous "clean graffiti" are being recycled into eco-friendly communication tools through street and/or (it depends!) guerrilla marketing operations that respect the environment which is far from always the case for this type of operation…!

For example, the video game news site Gameblog.fr called upon Edolone, an alternative communication agency, which used the concept to create a real buzz in the heart of Paris for the launch of the PS3 / Heavy Rain video game…

"The clean-tags reveal origami cranes, the visual symbol of the game Heavy Rain, and a simple but effective promise: "The killer is revealed on Gameblog.fr" inviting curious people to discover the Gameblog.fr website."

Another pioneer of reverse graffiti, this time an Englishman: Paul Curtis

The artist even created his own marketing agency to offer businesses eco-friendly communication through his art…logos and slogans that appear from under the pollution…Smirnoff, Xbox, among others, entrusted him with their images and advertising! Brands that understood! A small anecdote: Paul Curtis was ordered to clean up his clean tags! What an irony!…

++ Alexandre Orion
++ Edolone

Séverine