The Cougar Chronicle Staff

On May 10, the Visual and Performing Arts Department will host its eighth annual CSUSM Student Media Festival, celebrating the work of students filmmakers on campus. Here’s a look at one of the films that has earned official entry in the competition. 

“Confessions of a High-Art Street Vandalist” by Paul Crim

This 10-minute documentary by mass media major Paul Crim follows a “street vandalist” around the shopping malls, streets and parks of San Diego and Orange counties as he secretly creates whimsical art pieces (or what some critics may call graffiti) with signs, stickers, chalk, reflectors and other media.

The vandalist in the film (Crim himself)  practices an art form that he calls “brandalism,” the use of art to directly counteract unrealistic advertising messages.

“I’ve had a long-time fascination with the evolution of marketing and advertising campaigns, which have gone from relatively straightforward informational affairs in the early advertising days to a new neo-image and feeling-associations phase nowadays, messages that typically have little to do with the actual products being advertised,” he said.

For example in one scene shot at sunrise, the vandalist applies a commercial-looking sticker to the display windows of a Victoria’s Secret store in La Jolla that says “Introducing Unreal buy Victoria’s Secret.” Later, he applies a reflective “iMirror” sticker to the front window of a mall Apple Store that says “iCan’t Believe iPaid For This.” He can also be seen planting humorous artificial campaign signs amid real ones during election season in San Juan Capistrano.

Crim, a 32-year-old graduating senior who lives in Dana Point and commutes to Cal State San Marcos twice a week, said what inspired him to make the 2012 film was the temporal nature of the art itself. Many of his art pieces last only a day or two before they’re removed.

Crim says in the film that his particular form of art was inspired by the death of his mother when he was a boy. He said it comforts him to imagine he will see her again one day, and by extension that imagination has led him to try to change things in his environment that he doesn’t like to provoke a smile or make himself or others feel better.

Clearly not everyone is amused by the vandalist’s masterpieces, including a man who chased Crim and his camera operator to their car after he created a sidewalk mural with chalk.

Crim said the element of danger made creating the film both exciting and challenging. Because of the time it takes to set up camera and sound equipment, and to take shots from different angles, there were many close calls. And many art projects he conceived for the film weren’t successful and ended up on the cutting room floor.

Crim, who edited his film in the university’s Daniels Lab, said he’d like to eventually recut “Confessions” with more scenes from the failed art projects.