Designer Marc Ecko To ‘Get Up’
With Urban Legends And Hip-Hop Heavyweights At 1st Ever Graffiti Block Party
August 24th Street Festival to
Merge Old and New Schools of Urban Culture
(New York, NY), July 29, 2005 – Marc
Ecko, designer and "Navigator of Youth Culture," is set to recruit the legends
of Hip-Hop culture for the upcoming Marc Ecko’s Getting Up Block Party. The
first-of-it-kind street festival, free to the public and held August 24th on
22nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues from 12:00PM – 8:00PM, will feature
graffiti demonstrations, live DJs and surprise musical performances in
celebration of the golden age of Hip-Hop. The event coincides with the
anticipated release of Atari’s graffiti-based videogame, Marc Ecko’s Getting Up:
Contents Under Pressure.
As a throwback to graffiti’s glory
days, "Marc Ecko’s Getting Up Block Party" will feature ten 48-foot-long by
8-foot-high replicas of the legendary NYC transit blue-bird subway cars Ed
Walker, Jr., which will be transformed into contemporary urban works of art by
renowned graffiti writers. A lineup of legendary artists, from the notorious
‘Bronx bomber and destroyer’ COPE2 to T-KID (Terrible Kid), who first started
writing on trains as early as 1974, will spend the day doing full color murals
on the vintage trains.
Other participating graf writers
include DASH, WEST, CES, SONIC, IZ THE WIZ, MIN, DURO, WANE, WEN, DERO, CYCLE,
SMITH, PINK, DOC, KEL 1st, MARE139, CRASH, DAZE, SUB, GHOST, and the famous TATS
CREW.
Blue-birds, a high point of
nostalgia for historians and artists alike, were often used as an urban canvas
by graffiti writers throughout the 1980s before blasting machines and buffers
were used to strip them clean, effectively putting an end to the era of graffiti
artwork on the sides of trains.
"Graffiti is without question the
most powerful art movement in recent history and has been a driving inspiration
throughout my career," said Marc Ecko, Executive Creative Director for Getting
Up. "I’m honored to be bringing its pioneering creative forces together to look
back on its tradition and to celebrate its future."
In addition to reviving an old
school graffiti tradition, the block party will offer guests the opportunity to
participate in live demos of Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure and
experience the first truly authentic video game based on urban culture and
graffiti. The videogame, which is being published by Atari and developed by The
Collective for a Fall 2005 release, brings together over 65 legendary graffiti
writers, six of whom will serve as in-game mentors to its protagonist, Trane.
Event sponsors include GameStop
Corp., Truth www.thetruth.com
, Toy Tokyo www.toytokyo.com,
Montana paint and Mass Appeal magazine.
