Queries for Curators – Meeting of Styles

Wonder how to get your art on a public wall … Where you can practice art with spray paint? How you can connect to an international community of artists? Where all the single arty guys in Montreal are? Well, check out this Indyish interview from the vanguard of the local street art scene, Louis Coupal, and fellow curators of the Montreal Meeting of Styles graffiti jam…

=Indyish=how close do you run meeting of styles with the original founders in germany? is it like a franchise =) where you get info and stuff passed down from them? or is it totally freewheelin? i always wonder how good things manage to spread without getting bloated.. ??

Throughout the years, the International Wall Street Meeting has welcomed in Wiesbaden, Germany, about 25.000 visitors from all over Europe and the rest of the world. Because of its uncommercial and authentic style, but also because of its message (Youthculture needs space for expression) the Meeting is mentioned as one of the best events in Hip-Hop-Culture ever happened.

Because of its worldwide reputation and the great feedback the idea was born to spread its message all over Europe which led to the founding of the Int. Meeting Of Styles. In cooperation with partners we organized Meetings across Europe over to USA. In 2005 the event happened in 14 cities across 13 countries and attracted around 20.000 people to experience Graffiti- and Hip-Hop-Culture on its highest level. Madrid, Lyon, Copenhagen, Mexico, Zagreb, Rio and New York have all recently hosted the event.

In 2006, another premier has happened in Montreal – Canada. The city is famous for its liberal attitude and life-style. The Montreal graff scene is boomin’ and has a long history of activities. Several jams supported the scene and pushed it hard ( Check out Underpressure.ca )

Meeting Of Styles is like a franchise. Not like a circus that would go from city to city. Every city has an independent organization. The central Meeting Of Styles Crew is amazing, supporting us with mad hookups and some logistics.

===how did you originally get permission to take those walls? if other people in montreal see a wall they want to make art, what should they do (legal and or non).

Basically it’s up to the wall’s owner to call the shot. We made it happen. Anybody else probably can. Go get’em.

===what’s the step by step process of bringing an event like this into being?

Fund it, promote it, make it happen.

Our event is really homegrown and hustled hard. We’d be open to possible corporate interest, but for now, we’re just trying to prove what’s possible with minimal money and a whole lot of art.

===between sponsors and the door at the main events, do you get enough money to cover your costs?

Nope, please buy our shirts on location and throw at us any easy-earned money you have. We’re doing our best to come through cause that’s what we do.

===meeting of styles has a politics, but it’s not a demonstration or anything, how do the politics manifest?

To us, Style is substance. Just trying to have a huge creative, positive effect on the community. Don’t hate, participate.

===an artists friend brought me to meeting of styles to see how much more collaborative it was then under pressure – how do you work to make that happen? we did a graffiti jam on cars for the fringe this year, and the cars looked great, but the artists didn’t really collaborate to optimize the space so much… I think maybe we didn’t give em enough paint. I’d love to hear how you work with the artists and why you encourage collaboration instead of everyone painting their name in a box?

Forget about paint, give ‘em drugs and money.
JUST KIDDING.

I don’t know, these guys are just really Great at painting & we’re used to curating such jams as we had been doing a smaller thing in Lachine for years. The whole event is a big get-together so it’s great that the murals themselves have the same vibe.

===the meeting of styles website is pretty great – it seems like you get artists from all around the world contributing, how did you build up to that?

The MOS Int’l crew puts up www.meetingofstyles.com. It gets a lot of traffic and is terrific for us. We collaborate a bit to that website, as every local organization probably is… but basically they’re on top of things. Real chiefs.


===why is it when i go to these things i see no women painting (or maybe 1)? do you think there’s still a tough guy culture around it that wants the girls to be watching and cheering and looking cute and only takes the guys seriously? or do you think the girls hesitate to go out on the late night missions and so don’t get the practice and don’t feel like they’re good enough to come out for an event like this? or something else?

I think that most guys paint graffiti to impress the girls and try to get some.
JUST PLAYIN’

Hmm— yeah its a guy culture. Maybe guys, as teenager, are more into painting illegal spots at night…and thats how most graffiti artists started.

I don’t know, this sucks. We need the girls who are into it to step it up. And the scene needs to open up.

===how do you pick the artists?

1-We invite Montreal’s top writers. Guys who paint sickass murals here all year long.

2-We invite out of towners. People we look up to or cool kids we met travelling. We’ve been networking for decades.

===are there places in montreal that are legal or semi legal where an artist could practice large scale painting?

Yes there’s some legal walls that you can paint anytime. Hmm i think you can get the addresses on Bombingscience.com. I know there one in Duff Court, 18th av, in Lachine. Also some on De Rouen street, eastside mtl. Check it out.

I dont know anything about anything illegal, semi-legal, or legal with a twist.

===are their other events here or around the world that inspire you, and what about them?

We really look up to what the Underpressure.ca crew has been able to do in MTL. They’re cool. Also, we attended Meeting of Styles in the Bronx, NY, last year… It was amazing. Very minimalistic, very generic. Just a bunch of dudes painting. GREAT vibes.

===the three of you curate, how much of your year does this take up and what do you do the rest of the time?

The three of us have families and or jobs and or projects. Basically we cook it up in the winter and promote it in the summer. It’s really a fun venture so we try to make it as creative and crisp as possible. We’d spend more time on it if a company would like to drop mad G’s. As the phone’s off the hook, that might be the next step. But we love it how it is right now. Homegrown and hustled hard. We do it for the kids.

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That’s the end of the interview.

In the post interview email chatter we schemed about doing a show together where Indyish would work to find and invite the women visual artists (honestly, girls aren’t that hard to find!) and they’d bring the guys and we’d make ‘em collaborate. We also talked about events coming up and we invited them to jump in on the August Mess, and Louis suggested everyone check out Norm’s show at Kop Shop that night, Aug 31. So do it. Be in at least 3 places that night arright, because aside from the MOnthly Mess and Norm’s show, Spins and Needles is coming to town too at Bistro de Paris (corner Mt. Royale and St. Denis), and James Finnerty is play a show from 7-9 at Cafe Depanneur on Bernard. Whew!