“We are accused of gentrification so often now, as if it’s our fault” – Fin Dac
As we sat down at what –since then- has become the pub where I had a beer with Fin Dac, my first instinct was to ask him about the unglorious side of street art, a.k.a. gentrification, as his old piece in Rome (Quadraro neighbourhood) was vandalized several times by a “fiercly resistant” local.
“If you gonna do something,
if you gonna actually take the time to do something,
you have to do it 100%,
you have to give everything you can,
otherwise it is not worth doing it.”
Interview with Dan Kitchener
“Nice job you have” he said, lighting up a cigarette while walking towards me.
“Your job is likewise amazing” I replied, pointing to the couple cuddling in the darkness that was taking shape on the long wall of a derelict building in the industrial area of Stavanger.
“Well, I’d loved to be a food critique and eat my way around the world. But I ended up painting.”
I had just thrown myself on the bed when one of Nuart‘s organisers texted that they were having a magic time at the festival’s headquarters, where Axel Void was playing some nice tunes. Without thinking twice, I opened my umbrella and ventured back into the Stavanger night. But, when I arrived at Tou Scene, I only found a bunch of artists scattered lazily around the main room: they looked like they had spent the afternoon painting and were just about to sit down, someone was smoking, someone else was sipping a beer, and all of them were staring at their phones or laptops, including Axel Void, who definitely wasn’t playing any music.
When I was living in Slovenia, the beer scene was made up of merely the two pale, weak, national lagers: Union, brewed in Ljubljana, and Laško, named after the town near Celje where it is produced. As I was from the Celje area as well, I was for the ‘team Laško’, which implied believing in the Slovene saying ‘you drink Laško and you pee Union’.
‘I was pretty tense about this mural’ he said ‘You know, portraying someone like Pasolini… and, moreover, in a location like this one’ he added, pointing to the ruins of the Mira Lanza factory in the beautiful, post-industrial yard of Teatro India.
‘Well, you nailed it!’ I replied in my over-enthusiastic voice.
‘I guess so… I mean, now I’m satisfied with the result, but you should’ve seen me when I was approaching the job: I was so nervous!’