Wooster Collective: Online Gallery of Art on the Edge

Street art and culture jamming is by no means a new or culturally specific phenomenon. Excavation at Rome's fallen city of Pompeii has revealed graffiti scrawled on walls or commentary etched over top of various political or commercial announcements. However, with our continually, and undeniably, commercialized world, the proliferation of various sorts of culture jamming and street art becomes a refreshing alternative to the monotonous drone of the regular promotional noise in our daily experiences.

Though street art and culture jamming are mutually inclusive, they do exist as seperate ideas. Whereas each involves the creation of a public piece of interest and often through the use of pre-existing materials or structures, culture jamming typically takes the form of "subvertising," and creates a commentary, often critical in nature, directed towards an existing organization or group.

The Wooster Collective, named for a street in NYC's SoHo, has, since 2003, documented global instances of both street art and culture jamming, including anything from photos of specific works, interviews with specific artists, and even instructional videos for specific techniques, such as "tape art." Ranging from the whimsical to the witty, Marc and Sara Schiller's Wooster Collective has amassed such a vast collection of documented works that in August 2009 a YouTube channel was devoted to the Collective's videos.

Though we are now quite far from the 19th century styled Salon approval of "official art," the works and artists featured on the Wooster Collective are still frequently considered as existing on the periphery of the art world. Nevertheless, it can be said that the continuation, documentation, and accessibility of the various types of street art and culture jamming, from sites such as Wooster, provides us with a much needed, creative and inspirationally rebellious break from our world through challenging the daily mundane.

Space Invaders mosaic piece, by French street artist Invader. Photographed in Montpellier, France.