Street art, or graffiti?

by Austin Baranko

Portland Community College

Street art, or graffiti? Even its name sparks controversy and conflict within its own confines. Street art is the ever-growing, usually illegal practice of expression, often found in the forms of stencils, sticker art, sculptures, poster art, or wheat pasting -- an ancient recipe for a liquid adhesive, which is used to post images and posters on walls. Only calling for vegetable starch and water, wheat pasting is a popular medium due to its accessibility. What was once used for ancient bookbinding, collage, and papier-mâché, is now being used in a form of guerilla art.

Many times these unsanctioned installations are politically charged, and hold a message that hopes to reach a large audience. Street art is currently a hot topic. Is it art or just a crime? In 2007 two youths were arrested in Manchester, England and were both sentenced to twelve months in prison for posting art on the trains in the subway. Two months later, their case was appealed due to a networking campaign on Facebook. Officials were able to find the two by tracking them through pictures posted on a website.

Artist John Fekner describes street art a little bit differently. He believes that street art is “All art on the street, that isn’t graffiti”. So where can the line be defined? Is it found in the difference between lettering and images? Or rather, does it have to do with the message? Street art is politically charged, perhaps to raise awareness of social or political issues at hand.

For example, in Cairo, the emerging street art scene endorsed, perhaps demanded the overthrow of the Mubarak regime – which collapsed in 2011; the first major regime

change of that year’s explosive Arab Spring.

Barcelona boasts a booming street art scene, with many artists residing here in the city. Most websites offering information on street art will have a large section on Barcelona. It’s everywhere, ranging from loaded images of Gandhi donning a shirt that reads ‘bombing for peace,’ statements like ‘No one is legal’ sprawled in Catalan on the side of a closed café, to your typical territorial graffiti: Barcelona has it all.

Back in February 2013, two street artists we commissioned to repaint the ceiling of the Church of Saint Eulalia in L’Hospitalet, a town close to Barcelona. They painted a

Romanesque style piece that to the untrained eye could not be detected as being done

with spray paint. Locals are quite content with the piece, which was featured in a local

newspaper, claiming it was quite beautiful.

As far as the U.S. is concerned, New York is the street art Mecca. Pieces can be found all through out the city, with larger groupings in the neighborhoods of Chelsea, SoHo, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Although not as politically charged as its European counterpart, American street art is just as powerful. Unfortunately it is a little bit more few and far between. This could perhaps be due the lack of a lot of traveling between larger cities, or perhaps due to the public opinion.

Portland provides a great example. Self proclaimed artist haven, it boasts an exponentially expansive art scene. Although there is no lack of creativity or talent, finding extravagant pieces may prove a challenge. When a new painting pops up, it is often washed off the next day, which has given a rise to the sub-form of street art: slap tagging. Easy to identify, slap tags are images or text drawn or painted on to U.S.P.S. mailing stickers. These stickers are free, and often unmonitored, so it is quite easy to grab a fair share.

As recently as March of this year, new pieces have been popping up all over the city. Life-sized riot police have been appearing all over the city in high traffic areas such as Pioneer Courthouse Square. This could be a criticism of the stifling police presence which has been inflating within the city over the last few years. Recently, Portland, notorious for its anti-police state sentiments, has notably felt a stronger grip from local authorities, perhaps due to the numerous protests and the ever-famous “Occupy” movement. 

It seems that American street art has quite a ways to go to catch up to Europe. Perhaps this may all come to change with the recent culmination of political tension, due to recession and other socio-economic issues. It may seem struggle or unrest, coupled with a keen artistic eye and an open wall is all it takes for this art to take flight, for the voice of the common man with always find means to be heard.

All photos by Austin Baranko

 

Sources

http://endlesscanvas.com/?tag=portland

http://www.fatcap.com/city/barcelona/artists.html?

http://www.theworld.org/2013/02/spain-church-graffiti/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_art

http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/articles/2007/09/14/

140907_graffiti_mb_feature.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_pasting

In the blur of serenity

by Kristin Young

Portland Community College

Back home in the lush, green landscape of Oregon, our city parks are these grassy areas where kids can play, and the trails are paved (because they would otherwise be mud for the majority of the year).  For the most part, our parks are really only used as a shortcut across a city block or a nice bit of color against the gray, concrete world. Sure there are parks in suburbia, but those are mostly for jogging or a place to unload your kids so that you don’t have to worry about them being hit by a car. You would be hard-pressed to find someone taking time out of their day just to enjoy the surroundings unless it fit in to that day’s agenda.

Here in Barcelona, parks are everywhere, though many are very different from the ones I conjure up in my head.  Only the really large parks are covered in grass, and many have signs urging visitors to stay off of those rare patches of green.  Otherwise, you are usually looking at an area of vegetation in the middle of a large city with dirt paths and perhaps a simple play structure.  While they are different, they are beautiful in their own way.  Many have added architectural designs incorporated within and around, just waiting for discovery.  But besides looking completely different from what I think a park should look like, the way people use the parks here is far different than what I am used to.

 

Of course you have the standard dog-walkers and kids playing. I have even seen a jogger or two (but really, exercisers are not all that common on the streets).  The real beauty of the parks in Barcelona is that you can find someone sitting on a bench with a newspaper simply enjoying the moment of peace.  It’s not just a place to sit as you pound down one last cup of coffee before your thirty-minute lunch break is over. Instead of jogging through the park as a nice, quaint little place to get some exercise, people stroll though the park to chat whilst enjoying plants and flowers and escaping from the surrounding world of stone.

photos by Kristin Young

An AVE ride, Part 2

That's more like it! Interior of 

Barcelona's more traditional 

Estacio de Franca

by Pat Casey

OIEC History Instructor

As I mentioned in Part I, Barcelona Sants may not be the most romantic rail station in Europe but it is well designed and user-friendly; the first time I went there I quickly figured out where to go to find my train.

(Barcelona does have a grand and gloriously traditional rail station, BTW; called Estatió de França and formerly the city’s main station. Now it serves mainly local Rodalies trains but it does have overnight Trenhotel service to Paris.)

Sants also serves a number of local Rodalies trains, with access bundled at one side of the main hall and gates for the AVE high-speed rains at the other. One thing that Sants’s two-level design does is direct passengers to the proper platform, so it’s actually pretty tough to get on the wrong train.  The gate leading to your train opens roughly 15 minutes before departure; a gate agent scans your ticket and then you head downstairs to the platform. Since Sants is a terminal – most (if not all) AVE trains originate or end there rather than only pass through – your train is waiting for you as you descend to the platform.

The RENFE ticket printout lists your Coche (car) and Plaza (seat) number, and

That's Car 7, Seat 6B, 

leaving Sevilla at 2:50 pm, 

arriving Barcelona 8:22

the cars are sequentially numbered and have very clear electronic reader-board signs at all doors, so finding your car is straightforward.  AVE trains offer Club (First) Preferente (Business) and Tourist (second) class. First & Business Class features three-across seats and a meal and drinks served at your seat; second has four-across seating and food and drinks available in the Café Car. The food offerings seemed kind of basic – a selection of Spanish sandwiches (bocadillos), and croissants, along with a full array of soft drinks, beer, and small airline-bottles of whiskey, gin, and vodka.

These Café Cars have a counter and small tables where you can stand as you eat, but unlike some international trains (and long-distance Amtrak trains), there is no sit-down dining car service.

I went Tourista class and found the seats extremely comfortable and roomy. Each has a massive tray table, big enough to comfortably set up a laptop, and the cars have overhead luggage racks and some room for suitcases at the front and rear. A reader board at the front of the car lists the Coach number as well as outside temperature and current speed – fastest I ever saw was 300 KPH (186 MPH), although the trains are capable of going faster. There are also comparatively small – 13” or so – video monitors on the ceiling, which show full-length movies as well as an animated map showing your location.

An unusually wet Spring this year means

normally arid Andalusia is gloriously green

My train for Sevilla left the station right on time, and moved comparatively slowly through Barcelona’s outskirts but soon the reader board indicated we were doing 300 kph. The ride was quite smooth and there was a definite sense we were moving quickly, especially if you looked at things fairly close to the train window as we whizzed by.

When the Spanish began building the high-speed network in 1992 they decided to build entirely new stations in all but the largest cities (Madrid and Barcelona). As a result the stations are a bit less central than classic European rail stations, but all are within ten minutes of the center of town.

My train was nearly full and it seemed like a fair number of people boarded and left the train at intermediate stations such as Tarragona, Zaragoza, Ciudad Real, and Córdoba. We arrived at each intermediate station on time, as well as in Sevilla – a journey of nearly 1000 km (600 miles), covered in 5 ½ hours – that’s the same distance as San Francisco from Portland – imagine getting to the heart of town in less than 6 hours!

All photos by Pat Casey

Sources:

http://www.catalannewsagency.com/news/politics/last-high-speed-railway-stretch-between-barcelona-and-france-has-finally-been-unveiled 

http://www.adif.es/en_US/infraestructuras/lineas_de_alta_velocidad/lineas_de_alta_velocidad.shtml

http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/01/15/inenglish/1358253198_135607.html

A ride on Spain's high-speed AVE trains (Part 1)

by Pat Casey, OIEC History Instructor

Part I: Introduction and background

I’ve been a passenger rail fan at since grade school, when I traveled overnight from Portland to Glacier Park on Amtrak, and my fascination increased in college when I took the train to and from Chicago a number of times. After graduating I rode my first European train and came away amazed how it blew Amtrak away.

Before this teaching assignment I’d never ridden the Spain's AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) trains, which are among the premier European trains that travel at least 150 mph.

Spain is an interesting story on that front – before the 1990s its trains were considered some of the worst in Europe, but now they’re among the best.

The first high-speed link connected Madrid with Sevilla in 1992, to coincide with Sevilla’s Expo 92 that year – and attracted no little controversy:  detractors called it a train to nowhere (or worse, a train to Africa), and many noted that it seemed curious that Felipe González, the Prime Minister at the time, hailed from Sevilla. . .

High-speed rail reached Barcelona in 2008, with a Madrid connection which has proven so popular that one airline has seen its traffic drop between the two cities by half.

The network has grown and today Barcelona has high-speed connections with several major cities around the country, so my first decision was where to go? A link to Provence in France won’t go into service until this summer, but there is excellent service to Madrid as well as Malaga, Grenada, Cordoba, and Sevilla in Andalusia – which is Spain’s southern-most region and home to what most Americans associate with the country such as bullfighting, flamenco, and astonishing Moorish architecture. (All three are scarce in up in far northern Barcelona, where bullfighting is now even illegal!)

Sevilla and Córdoba made a convenient pair to visit and both offer amazing sights indeed, such as Sevilla’s Cathedral  (third-largest in Europe and home to what the locals insist is Columbus’s tomb) and its Alcázar palace (where Ferdinand and Isabella entertained Columbus); and Córdoba’s Cathedral, or Mezquita, is an iconic forest of arches – one of the best-known images of Spain -- that was originally a Visigothic church, then a mosque, and then from the 1500s a church again.

Cordoba's remarkable, iconic Mezquita

Spain’s national rail company RENFE operates all AVE trains, which all require reservations. You can get these at rail stations, from travel agencies (Spain’s El Corte Ingles department stores all have them), or online. Many sources warn that RENFE’s own website www.RENFE.com is less than user-friendly and has a tradition of not accepting U.S. credit cards, so I was hesitant to use it -- but apparently the site has been upgraded lately because I found that, with a bit of effort, I was able to reserve everything and pay online (although as an Apple user I discovered the site likes Chrome or Foxfire way better than Safari).

The site has an English-language option that worked fine, although there were a few places that didn’t translate so I had to improvise. If you don’t enjoy that sort of thrill there’s also an easy-to-use U.S. website www.petrabax.com that’s directly connected to RENFE, but it adds a small surcharge and when I checked it did not allow same-day or next-day reservations.

If you have a printer RENFE’s website lets you print your own boarding pass; if not it issues you a six-letter code allowing you to print one at the station. I went this route and it worked flawlessly.

All AVE trains use Barcelona’s Sants station, which is user-friendly and has been recently renovated, but I found it a bit of a letdown – part of the fun of European train travel is the busteling 19^th Century iron latticework complexes like Paris’s Gare du Nord or London’s Victoria Station. Sants though was built in the 1970s and looks it: a big, stark rectangular building with all tracks below – sort of like a cleaner, easier-to-use version of New York’s Penn Station.

Main entrance to Barcelona's Sants Railroad Station

(Modern rail stations don’t have to be boring: Rome’s Termini is about the same vintage as Sants but it maintains the vibe and romance a Euro rail station ought to have, but I digress.)

 

So where shall we go?  Sants Station's arrivals/departures board

My aesthetic issues aside, Sants station did accomplish its main purpose: getting to my train was easy and straightforward. As with airline travel you check in and put your bag through a scanner, but this version was way less intimidating and smoother than any airport security I’ve encountered. There is a big electronic sign in the middle of the station indicating which platform your train will use, and getting to the right one was no problem. Your ticket indicates your car and seat number, and the AVE cars have very well-marked, easy-to-find electronic signs so getting to where I belonged was a snap.

 

My AVE awaits (in Sevilla's Santa Justa Station)

all photos by Pat Casey

Coming in Part 2: the actual ride

Sources:

http://www.psmag.com/politics/taking-high-speed-trains-into-the-future-20305/

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/how-high-speed-rail-died-in-texas-thrived-in-spain-32021/

http://www.seat61.com/Spain-trains.htm#.UWsMtb_kbwy

Rick Steves, Spain 2013, Avalon Books, 2013

Intro & arrival in Barcelona

This blog is a project by students in Oregon International Education Consortium (OIEC)'s Spring Term 2013 program in Barcelona. Spain is a new location for us; in the past we've offered study abroad experienes in Paris, London, and Florence. Our European partner is Barcelona SAE www.BarcelonaSAE.com, an organization that offers a number of educational opportunities in addition to helping American colleges offer Barcelona foreign study programs to their students.

Things began at Portland International Airport on Sunday, March 24 as we boarded the Delta nonstop to Amsterdam, then a five hour layover, and finally arriving Monday afternoon in Barcelona -- where we found a suitable greeting indeed: 

 Barcelona SAE Director Rich Kurtzman and his staff greeted us at the airport, then hailed taxis to take us to our various apartments around town. Orientation continued the next morning as everyone gathered at Barcelona International College, in Barcelona's elegant Eixample neighborhood. This is both SAE's headquarters and classroom building, located in the very heart of Barcelona. Things began with introductions and Rich shared the general outlines of an overseas experience, along with particulars of living in Barcelona.

To cure any lingering jet lag, and to give an overview of the city and an introduction to traditional Catalan cuisine, Rich and the staff led everyone on a hike up to Can Marti, a famous (praised by  Gwyneth Paltrow no less) Catalan restaurant on Mt. Tibidabo, with a stunning view of Barcelona and the Mediterranean.

Lunch was a classic Catalan menu, including calcots, a large, mild onion available only this time of year, and traditionally char-broiled and served with romesco sauce; toast with tamate and garlic; grilled meats; and dessert. 

Rich demonstrates proper use of the porro, a traditional 

Catalan glass jug.

With practice you can take a serious swig,

but expect to get splattered before that happens. . .

Afterwards we rode the funicular down to Placa Catalunya, where we visited FNAC,

a European electronics chain to buy local cell phones --

and then classes began the next morning at 9!

Oregonians in Barcelona 13