3ttman is out of control .. his work gets better and better exponentially. Check out his newly redesigned web site.

If you have been to Buenos Aires .. then you have seen Buenos Aires Stencil’s work. Tons of great work! Check them out.

I am a huge fan of this French street artist living in San Paolo, Brazil. Check out his Fotolog

Spelling and grammatical errors by Nate Williams
Translated by Iani

DOMA, a group of Argentine artists who started in the Street-Art scene in 1998, work with all these elements, adding a dash of irony into the mix. As their work has progressed through urban installations, guerrilla art and absurd campaigns, DOMA has created various concepts and characters which gradually evolved to come alive in the animations, motion graphics, films, toys and VJ performances. Residing in Buenos Aires, they divide their time between severals original different projects.

The Members are Mariano Barbieri, Julian Pablo Manzelli, Matias Vigliano and Orilo Balndini.

I love how you took a giant doll to a busy street (Florida) and the project was less about the doll as an object but more about how people interacted with it. What are some of the memorable interactions you have witnessed with your projects?

We could write a book about reactions. That’s what interests us the most about our work, it’s like we’re addicted to the reactions people have when they see our work. The day of the Giant Dummy in Buenos Aires downtown, it was amazing to see how there were people that would not have any reaction whatsoever, they wouldn’t look at it, they would just keep walking, continuing their sad and monotonous routine with their suits and briefcases. The ones who paid the most attention were the “street kids” (homeless), that were asking for money or cleaning shoes, they literally stopped doing whatever it is they were doing to start playing with us for the whole evening. They wouldn’t let us take the dummy away.

There seems to be a trend in graffiti today that references old Nintendo games .. I refer to it as STREET NINTENDO .. you know Happy Clouds, rainbows, simple smiling characters, etc .. Do you think the artistic medium often influences subject matter?

Definitely, having grown up discovering digital media must has affected our lives and everyone else’s around the world. We saw this change through our teenage years after a more analog childhood. We received our first emails at the age of 22 and 24 years old approximately. Nowadays, there’s 3 years olds with their own email address. I think we were the last generation that had an analog childhood without internet. That’s what I believe gives us a fairly special perspective.

Chu (DOMA) & Nasa

Fase, Chu (DOMA) & TheLondonPolice

DOMA, KidGaucho, Barfuss, Nasa, etc

What are some current trends in Graffiti?

At this very moment a new trend must be coming out, it’s hard to say and be precise…. For what I’ve seen here in BA, after the post crisis stencil boom, a lot of these guys gave the city a new layer, stickers, and huge murals, and as a parallel, as far as graffiti goes, the city was invaded with tags, bombs, and trains, etc… This movement is slowly growing… We have to thing that the street art got here not too long ago… When the boom started in places like Europe and USA, the liberalism, punk and graffiti were happening, back in the 70’s and early 80’s, but in those times, Argentina was going through one of the worst dictatorships, with 30,000 missing people, and young people were in a completely different frequency… they were either hiding or were militant…

You are originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, but you have traveled quite a bit. What are some of the unique things you see in the Argentine Art Scene? What other scenes have some unique things going on?

I think you can find unique things everywhere. We have discovered very inspiring things in all of our trips. From Ecuador to Mexico, Barcelona, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Berlin, New York, etc…

The Argentine Art Scene, I think, was going through a positive change as far as fitting in… Strong ideas and conservative customs are giving space to new expressions these last couple of years…

Chu (DOMA), Fase, Nasa, KidGaucho, Maybe & RunDon’tWalk

The truth is that there isn’t an art, illustration, street art, toys venue … the market is very focused on fine arts and is very traditional.

Beyond this, there’s the work of certain artists with amazing talent in many different areas. The political and cultural vision the third world can express through humor can be observed as something very unique… we have lots of local artists that work on those areas…

Why do you reference Ronald McDonald a lot? Does he represent something specific in your work?

We only did pieces about Ronald Mc Donald from 2002-2003, during the Mundo Roni Proyect. After the crisis in Argentina, we created this character that was a candidate to president named Roni, as a parody to Ronald Mc Donald. Trough this very important and absurd campaign, that even had a website, a tv spot (in Locomotion Channel), flyers, stencils, serigraphy, an urban performance, and a closing at the Ruth Benzacar Galeryand then in Berlin No Tango.

What do you think about the current trend in marketing where big companies hire street artists, hip artists, etc to legitimize their products? or to make them “Cool”? What’s your take on corporate graffiti? Do corporations have the same right as individuals?

It’s a very delicate subject… very hard, and we’re a part of that. First of all, I think that it depends on the type of project and the final purpose. Something that we DON’T do, is to sell any character or anything that represents DOMA to be used as an image for a brand or campaign, we’ve had offers, but we always declined. Unfortunately, there’s this brand called John Foos (the ones that make a lot of money by copying the Converse’s All Star shoe model) took a photo of one of our mural and other artists and used it as an image for their campaign. It’s a real shame, so we’re working on it, trying to figure out our next move, with layers, etc…

Apart from that, we have interesting offers from serious companies, which we’ve learned to choose and work with according to their profile… where there’s respect for the artist and mentions our name. Obviously in exchange for something we need, so we benefit each other….

Actually, I think that just because corporations have the same right as the individuals in some countries, the world is the way it is, everything is a mess, no equality and negative contrasts. While lots of people have nothing, others have everything. The fact of making profit without caring about the cause is the reason why these corporations make the world like this, also abuse and environment hazardous. If a corporation has the same rights as a person and the corporation got psychological treatment, just like a person would, the profile we would get back is of a psychopath , therefore, nowadays it’s very hard to realize that the world is in the hands of psychopaths…

What are some of DOMA’S latest projects?

We had this thing at the OneDotZero Buenos Aires and then in Berlin Pictoplasma Character Walk. It’s called Versus and it’s basically two dolls facing each other and talking to each other through projections.

This year 2007 we’re launching a series of mini figures in vinyl with Kidrobot, where there will be a family of 15 different characters. We also have a new Plush line coming up for march approximately and more art shows.

I traveled to Madrid, Spain in 2003 right before the IRAQ war started. There were amazing protests in the street, ARTCO was taking place .. and I was just fortunate enough to meet an amazing artist that goes by the name of 3TTman. He’s originally from France but has lived in Spain for awhile and he paints the most incredible murals.

Here is one of the protests I stumbled upon

Aznar was Spain’s president at the time .. but people voted him out next election for supporting going to war with IRAQ

3TTman himself