Style Wars (1983) is regarded as the breakthrough documentary for the graffiti scene, the film that introduced graffiti to the wider (European) public. The film was shot in the early 1980s in New York and features everything that was cool at the time; the Sugar Hill Gang, break-dancing, ski goggles (instead of sunglasses) and of course ‘bombing’ in the New York subway. Shortly before the subway operator permanently drove the spray can artists from the tunnels, taggers such as Seen, Kase, and Skeme showed the world what was going on. By combining the images with breakdance and rap music, a wide public was given its first positive image of the graffiti and hip hop culture.
Wild Style (1983) by Charlie Ahearn is also conceived of as the first hip hop film. The documentary-style feature film is primarily about graffiti, but it simultaneously provides a portrait of the era in which Hip Hop emerged. The title Wild Style is revealing: in the early years of hip hop there was no actual term for the genre. It was referred to as Wild Style Music or Break Music. The star of the film is none other than Lee Quinones, who plays Zoro, an inventive graffiti artist whose work attracts the attention of the ‘serious’ art world – a storyline that Lee also experienced himself: in 1982 he was invited to participate in Documenta in Kassel, and he received various requests for murals, including in Rotterdam, which resulted in the commissioned piece LEE (Berenkuil, Lijnbaancentrum) in the city centre.
This evening is part of the exhibition programme Mooi van Ver (Stand Well Back to Appreciate).