The London Police: Street art Icons

The London Police (TLP) is a London based duo which paint their LADS with smiley faces all over the world. They started in 1998 and TLP is essentially built on friendship. The friendship between Bob and Chas and their mission to travel the world and make boring places into more colourful, enjoying and friendly spaces. TLP make clean, graphical and bold street art. I found and photographed this piece (above) in Berlin and it's made on a big wall facing a playground for kids. Imagine the place without that mural. I think it makes a big difference.

In 2011, TLP and other artists were in Oslo to raise awareness and funds for Human Rights Watch. TLP claimed that Street Art fans are typically more in touch with the needs of communities and are fierce advocates of the rights of all people. The photos below, I took an early morning in Oslo. In general the street art culture have always been concerned with social awareness, societal values and political issues. E.g. the Occupy movement was massively supported by street artists who helped the activists to spread their message to the world. "We are the 99%". When Banksy presented a street art piece to the Occupy Movement in London it was news headlines all over the world. Shepard Fairey did the same for the movement in US (occupy wall street). The same happened when street artists began to paint on the Israeli wall on the West Bank drawing attention toward the situation for palestinians.

TLP in Oslo

TLP closeup

I don't know if street art can change the world, but street art isa very and social attention to a number of issues. Street Art have an impact becausethe work is public and for all, and that's hard to ignore. In addition to the public availability in the urban space. Today, if a new street art piece comes up in London, Berlin or Vardø, it burns through internet almost before it's finnished and is made available for people all over the world. You may not know where Vardø is, well check it out here. Well, I think that TLP makes a difference and you may visit their web site here for news. Together with this post I choose "All along the Watchtower" with Jimi Hendrix. This song by Dylan is so so cool! (Click on the link or the "play" button in the box below to listen).

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

This is the famous quote from George orwell's book Animal Farm (1945). The quote is comrade Napoleons re-formulation of the 7. commandment "all animals are equal" in the ideology of animalism when he take absolute power of the farm and transform it into a totalitarian society.


In history this quote have been used heavily by reactionaries and conservatives to criticise the Marxist and communist ideology and society. And yes, Orwell's fairy tale describes the process and developments of totalitarianism and elitism in ideology and politics, but does his tale apply to us?

 In US, Western Europe and Norway we tend to like that democracy is different, more open and more egalitarian than comrade Napoleons farm. However we tend to forget the part where Orwell describes the the dynamics of power and elitists thinking which may as well apply to our society. Often hidden, but may reveal it self in critical situations. It's difficult for our society to deal with the forces where the main duty is to secure the power base. The agents of these forces are not the main "actors" on the public arena like e.g. Napoleon in Animal Farm or the main politicians and political actors in our society. We may call the forces to secure power base "the shadow" of an open society. These forces rules by comrade Napoleons dictate: "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others".