Invaders line the walls of Varanasi
Dave and his wife spent last weekend in Varanasi, the holy Hindu city, and discovered that it was chock-a-block with Invaders, the tile-based Space Invader graffiti/street art icons: "These were all over Varanasi: paintings on the ghats, mosaics in the passageways. With twisting alleys, crumbling stone structures, and wandering Sadhus coming at us from every direction, Varanasi feels like it hasn’t changed in two hundred years. Which made these paintings and mosaics all the more incongruous." Link (Thanks, Dave!)
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Looks like Varnassi is not on the list (yet?).
But I'm pretty sure that they're from here:
http://www.space-invaders.com/sominv.html
I've seen them around in 4 different cities, and first became intruiged by them in 2005 when I spent a week working in Avignon.
The whole thing started in Paris. The first time I saw one was on Place de la Bastille. I also remember a huge one painted in white in the Metro Line 1 subway tunnel.
See also : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invader_%28artist%29
These are indeed placed by Space Invader, he also recently invaded Kathmandu. You can read more in his newsletter.
The photo in the blog post is unusual; it looks like a stencil or a paste-up? Invader typically attaches mosaics.
Photos of two of the Amsterdam Invaders from my recent trip:
http://flickr.com/photos/kpratt/2348709268/
http://flickr.com/photos/kpratt/2346337607/
Glad to hear the actual back story on the Invaders though.
I don't know why I like that so much, but I do.
And it's actually Varanasi, or Benares, not Varnassi.
Does nobody else find this unutterably sad? It's not art, it's Western colonialism. We go to strange cities in foreign countries, seek out their holiest places and spray paint them with images from a trivial, mindless computer game. Imperialism writ-large. Whatever happened to peace, love and understanding?
this one is just near my house in Utrecht, Netherlands.
http://www.mrmule.com/archives/2005/04/utrecht_invaded.html
http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=invader&w=45872602%40N00
A few I've seen around. One in London, two in Newcastle. There's two more I know of in Newcastle (whwre I live) but need to photo them. There's always something really nice being in a different city, and spotting one out of the corner of your eye and thinking "There's an invader!"
I was in Varanasi recently & saw the space invaders, but I was more distracted by the huge swastikas painted everywhere.
Swastikas are Hindu symbols, so I reckoned with 300 million gods, there's a good chance that one of them is represented by the space invaders symbol.
I think part of the bargain for "good" graffiti is that the viewing public receives some hidden artistic benefit that balances the basic vandalism.
I doubt the locals in Varanasi derive much benefit from something like this compared to a postmodern city like London. There was that idiot who "tagged" a glacier in NZ and was rightly arrested.
Already backpackers and trekkers have to overcome a bad reputation with the locals in cities like Varanasi, Kathmandu, and Rishikesh because of their association with drugs; graffiti is not going to help.
French Blue@6
So you're saying the Lotus Lounge Restaurant, Phulwari Restaurant & Sami Cafe, Shiva Resaurant, Modern Vision Guest House, Dolphin Restaurant, Rashmi Guest House, and all those other advertisment all over those pictures were all done by imperialistic westerners? If he's crapping all over the local religious structures, he's just following the local custom.