WALL LAB BY Roc Blackblock
Barcelona
29.06.2020
Wall Lab’s latest edition was held during the month of June, and from Rebobinart we have been in charge of the production of this project.
Wall Lab is a Wallspot programme aimed at artistic experimentation in public spaces and the creation of long-lasting murals. The participating artists of this initiative are usually selected through an open call, but in this edition the selection has been made through a contest. During the lockdown period, Wallspot launched a contest via Instagram, open to all artists who are part of the platform. To participate, they had to submit a mural sketch along with the hashtag #WallspotEnCasa, and finally, from all the participants, Wallspot and Rebobinart selected three winning artists and Roc Blackbock was one of them.
Roc studied graphic design and illustration, and later began in the world of graffiti. His works have a social side, therefore becoming for him a communication channel to make various social issues and movements visible. This way, his murals manage to integrate perfectly with the reality of the territory.
For this edition of Wall Lab, Roc Blackblock depicted a work that represents the passage of time on a medium format wall. He chose this theme because it has a direct relationship with the confinement scenario that we have recently experienced. From this piece, the artist asks the viewer to stop and think about the concept of time, how we take advantage of it, and what are the things which really matter.
This concept of time and its transience is related to the Wall Lab project, which aims to provide Wallspot artists spaces where works have a durability between half a year and a year, unlike the rest of free walls, where the works are ephemeral.
Rebobinart, in addition to being in charge of the project’s production, provided the participants with all the necessary materials to perform their artwork as well as an artistic fee and a video interview along with a photographic compilation to promote the work of these artists.
In the video, Roc Blackblock talks about twenty years painting in Barcelona —«we went from legality to illegality»— and about his Wall Lab wall, made just as lockdown ended. His 80-year-old mother inspired it: «she felt her time was being stolen from her». Hence a reflection on the passing of time.
Video transcript (translated from Catalan)4 min 24 s
Hello, I'm Roc Blackblock, I'm from Barcelona and I make murals. I started painting in '99: that's twenty years now.
Things have changed radically in many ways. First, because in regulatory terms we went from legality to illegality: there is persecution, there is zero tolerance of graffiti under the civic bylaw — which, incidentally, some people promised they would repeal and we are still waiting.
And as a result of that administrative intolerance of everything that happened in the street, all sorts of initiatives have emerged in Barcelona. One of them is Wallspot, which I think has also helped broaden the spectrum and the number of people who come to painting in the street. We have to keep chipping away and we have to back these projects that in some way open up paths so that the city becomes once again a space that reflects everything happening inside it.
Here in Barcelona there are a lot of us who have been working for many years, and I think it is essential that we somehow join forces, all of us —cultural managers, production companies and artists— to consolidate Barcelona once and for all as a living space, a city that is alive, intense and lived in the street, which is in its DNA. And any urban culture like this one, I think the city is waiting for it with open arms.
Finally, given the moment we were in, I went ahead with this proposal, which aims to be a reflection on the passing of time. For me, perhaps one of the things that struck me most was seeing how different people had lived through those two months, those sixty or ninety days shut up at home. I have teenage daughters and I have a mother who is in a risk group, eighty years old, and she was the one who came and told me that two months for me, or for my daughters, or for younger people, was nothing and would pass as just another anecdote; but that she felt her time was being stolen from her. That was a sentence that struck me, it touched me very deeply, and I wanted somehow to pour that emotional impact into a reflection on the passing of time, on how fleeting our time here is and how important it is to make the most of every moment: carpe diem, in a way. You come out of lockdown and what you feel like painting is the fruit of all those experiences and reflections we were forced into.
Video transcript, edited for reading: repetitions and verbal fillers have been removed, the text has been punctuated and speakers are identified.
