Stencilling with spray cans evolved as a new medium of protest articulation in the early 1980s, Paris is said to be its urban germ cell. The phenomenon then became better perceived and at the same time cross-linked via the amplification through the Internet. Similar to the development of Rock Music posters stencilling is suited to observe that media of (protest) distribution can easily transform into media of success.
The technique is simple: The serials are realised by cutting out cardboard (like Bristol) or plastic leafs, then acting as the negative through which a colour is spray-canned up on paper or a wall. The technique seems to be one of the oldest illustration forms, the earliest examples consisting in silhouettes of hands which were found in caves and realised by blowing stone dust through those hands leaning against a wall. Considering light as a very special type of non-permanent eco spray paint, the roots of serial mural painting might as well be seen in stereotomic diaphanous architecture. The exciting artistic essence of this technique for me consists in its vividness and simplicity of making empty space tangible.
For those interested in formal observations the stencil can also be taken as a physical symbol of the calculus of form developed by George Spencer Brown. Being on one side of a distinction the artist is creating a selectively permeable form, this letting through a distinctive mark on the outside of the protest form: the external space of the street. It is funny to see that a cut-out nothing has indeed a conditioned structure, later visible as a mark on the wall.
And the re-entry into the form is as well right at hand: As examples of the law of crossing some time ago spray painted parts of the late Berlin wall were sold on flee markets, giving cause for reflections on former forms of concrete distinction. The spray canned Nikefootball campaign just as well showed that the inside of an assumed protest form can easily be mirrored back and merged with the affirmative background of a fashion store or art gallery.
You are the machinery... and the wrench...