Introduction Think of the topography of your city. You have your restaurants, business buildings, apartment complexes- hills, valleys, rivers and beaches- all surrounded by copious amounts of sidewalks or city streets. There is very little space that is untouched by mankind in your city. Even the somewhat open spaces are filled with advertisements for the latest Hollywood production or a poster of that thing that you did not know that you always wanted.    You are walking to work, like every other day. You pick up the newspaper and a coffee, and you recall how much you really do hate Mondays. Then you notice that on the corner where a normally comfortable, quaint looking café resides, someone has their illegibly sprawled name or a big green “Fuck Off” across the front windows. Beside it is a distinct A for Anarchy symbol. The owner of the quaint café is outside muttering uncertainties to himself while he hopelessly scrubs and chips away at the writing. Is this art? 

Introduction

Think of the topography of your city. You have your restaurants, business buildings, apartment complexes- hills, valleys, rivers and beaches- all surrounded by copious amounts of sidewalks or city streets. There is very little space that is untouched by mankind in your city. Even the somewhat open spaces are filled with advertisements for the latest Hollywood production or a poster of that thing that you did not know that you always wanted.   

You are walking to work, like every other day. You pick up the newspaper and a coffee, and you recall how much you really do hate Mondays. Then you notice that on the corner where a normally comfortable, quaint looking café resides, someone has their illegibly sprawled name or a big green “Fuck Off” across the front windows. Beside it is a distinct A for Anarchy symbol. The owner of the quaint café is outside muttering uncertainties to himself while he hopelessly scrubs and chips away at the writing.

Is this art? 

Welcome to Street Art: Narrating the War on Terror by Brody Engelhard. In this site there will be links, photos, videos and descriptions all aimed to help you understand how the tools of graffiti and street art can be used to narrate the War on Terror.      Let me explain. Whether it through pictures, movies, comics, novels or media, we are always trying to communicate narratives or stories to one another about events happening in the world. Sometimes these are fictional events and sometimes, like The War, they are not.      Like all the great art movements before it, graffiti was made an art form when it first decided to start saying something of meaning. Maybe at first it wasn’t clear that street art was here to say something, but with the explosion of artists like Banksy, Shepard Fairy, D*face, Space Invader and so many others, it has become clear that street art and graffiti is here to stay. They are no longer just pretty names written on the side of a train, but images with purpose and meaning.      This site will take aim and connecting the meanings and purposes of this art form with the War on Terror in hopes to show that street art can be an effective medium in which to explore and share a narrative through.
“Table of Contents”
Know Hope →
Osama Bin Laden Art →
The post is rated M for Mature. If Lara Croft was a pre-killing piece, this would be a prime example of a post-killing, um, piece. Street artist by the name of Beast went around New York City putting up his own modified map of the city to show how –excited he is about Bin Laden’s demise. The clever work captures the mood and feeling around the city during these first few post Bin Laden days. This is in itself a narrative and a microcosm of what mood has been in New York in the short months after his death. 
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