Artist Talk with Al Diaz, Kate Storch, and Amelia Alberti (Part 1)

Audience: “Al Diaz, at the height of your career, did you realize you were a part of something bigger?

Al Diaz: “Absolutely not. We were living in the moment. I was 15 at the time. It was 1974 and that was the best and strongest year and as far as I was concerned, and I was so not concerned with anything in the future. I was 15 years old. Some people will answer that question and say, ‘Oh yeah, we saw this was going to be a worldwide hit.’ As far as I'm concerned, that is b*******. We were having too much fun. Also, it's like you know that one famous photograph of all the Jazz musicians in Harlem? Well, somebody once said, ‘Yo, we should take a photo like that’, and I'm like, ‘Bro, if you try to plan on something to be epic, that s*** is going to fail right from the giddy up.’ ‘Cause it's got to be organic - if it happens, it happens. I did a show called "City of Kings" that was celebrating the fact that grafitti was a kid's culture. The average graffiti artist was from the age of like 12 to 16, and you aged out when you were 16. I mean now people are doing graffiti in their forties that would have never occurred back then. It wasn't a thing. But the point is that it was this huge global phenomenon that has spawned a billion-dollar industry like spray paint Montana, all kinds of technology for graffiti and street yard/street art. But the jumpstart came from a bunch of kids. So imagine, this street culture became a global phenomenon, you can't go anywhere on the planet Earth and not see someone throw up something. It's insane. I feel like there's something to behold about the fact that that s*** was started by kids, you know.”

Kate Storch: “Yeah, like you said, it's important to make sure people actually know the history. It's so important because you gotta make sure those people are talked about with respect.”

Al Diaz: “The truth is that the real story is always far more interesting than the consumer version told story. It's always more complex, and it's never so clear-cut, dry, or simple. These people in the industry will always oversimplify a history because it's easy to understand for most people, but you know the fact is that all those things occur in such a complex and convoluted sort of way that is hard to know unless you see what was really happening. Not every graffiti artist was a b-boy; some guys like heavy metal, you know what I'm saying. So to oversimplify it just like that is crazy.”

Kate Storch: “I always say that. I think that when it comes to music, we know the stories of different artists, but when it comes to other elements like graffiti, there's usually some envelope movie about all of it, but not like the individuals who really contributed because they didn't document it like we do now. We're lucky to have the documentaries we did, but they didn't cover everybody. We know about certain big-name artists, right? However, there were many other artists who were very influential, but we just didn't have the documentation then to cover them.”