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 HillbillyHorus
   
Location: Charlottesville Virginia
Gender: Male
Im in ur government, killin ur d00dz
 |  |  | Re: Article on Jeff Chapman
<Reply # 1 on 10/16/2005 5:56 PM >
|  | | | Great article. I didn't know he published other zines. Thanks for posting it.
You can't fall off a mountain. |
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Duct Tape
 
Location: Toronto
Gender: Male
"The Handyman's Secret Weapon"
| |  | Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 2 on 10/17/2005 12:41 PM >
| | | | Just thought everyone would appreciate this article from Today's Toronto Star on Ninjalicious and the Book Launch Party coming up this thursday for "Access All Areas" his pothumus book on the art of Urban Exploration.
Regards
DT
Toronto Star Article
Unlocking a world of forbidden places
Jeff Chapman scaled walls `with ladder of audacity'
Posthumous book is guide to urban exploration
MURRAY WHYTE
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER
At any given time of the day or night, he might have been nearby — just not in any of the places you'd think to look. In the dark shadows underfoot, perhaps, trekking the labyrinthine network of transit and utility tunnels and storm drains that cleave the city underground. Or high above, possibly, poised delicately on the rain-slicked steel roof of City Hall's west tower, surveying the city around and below.
His mission, simply, was "going places you're not supposed to go." And to a network of acolytes around the world, he was a hero.
To them, he was Ninjalicious, the soul of Infiltration.org, urban explorer sans pareil. To those close to him here in his hometown of Toronto, he was Jeff Chapman. And the simplicity of his stated mission was just one of his many shows of humility.
"He was the mildest guy I ever knew," said Liz Clayton, Chapman's wife for the last eight months of his life. Chapman, 31, passed away in August after many years of battling liver disease. "He actually couldn't take anything too seriously. It was hard for him to do that."
Just before he died, he finished a book of his accumulated wisdom. Access All Areas: A User's Guide to Urban Exploration, will have its official launch next Thursday at the Distillery District. It's both a repository of the practical application of his pursuit — chapters include "Legal Considerations" and "Safety Issues" — and life ethos, Clayton said.
"He was analytical — he wanted to know why rules were there, and think about whether they were ethically based at all," Clayton said.
"He just felt that people should open their minds — stop walking around being robotic, staring at the ground. Look up, look around, look all over, and think about why we're making the decisions that we are."
On Inflitration.org, under a heading titled "Warning Signs: A guide to ignoring them," Chapman explains how to read with fresh eyes: "Danger: Do Not Enter" is, Chapman wrote, "kind of like a sign saying `Tasty Food: Do Not Eat.'"
His helpful translation? "If this sign was written in proper English, it would say `There is danger ahead, so do not enter unless of course you like that kind of thing and think you can take care of yourself.' And you do. So go ahead."
Access All Areas has the same spirit: Chapman offers a practical guide to indulging one's curiosity while gently subverting — not recklessly confronting — the structures of authority. It also contains generous but understated sprinklings of his famous wit: Alongside the mechanical innards of the city's built environment is a quick, ready guide to high-society party crashing.
"Whether it's an opening party for a new gallery or club or business, a wedding reception or just some people getting together to celebrate the fact they can afford a lot of cheese, high-society shindigs are always a lot of fun to pop in on," he wrote. "The only barriers to intruders are social barriers easily scaled with the ladder of audacity."
Clayton recalled one of his favourite terms: "Changeportunity," a cheeky faux-management speak word for the wonderful openness of otherwise private spaces that yawn wide during renovations and construction. Carry a clipboard, wear some coveralls, and nowhere is off-limits — even if, officially, it is.
The Distillery is an appropriate venue for the launch, Clayton said, for just that reason. How many Distillery buildings offered Chapman his changeportunity? Clayton smiled. "Let's just say several."
Since his teens, Chapman had made zines — lovingly constructed handmade pamphlets, the staples of the independent publishing community — about his personal fascinations. His best-known, Yip, was essentially a homespun humour magazine, infused with his particular thoughtful, offbeat wit.
"He was so funny, so friendly, so sensitive to others," said Sean Lerner, one of Chapman's closest friends and a frequent collaborator. "And he was so creative. Exploring wasn't all he was. He was so much more."
Infiltration began as a zine as well, but blossomed into a worldwide subculture as it emerged on the Web in 1996.
So, too, did the way he explored: A strict code of ethics — never to do damage or upset the environments infiltrated in any way — informed his sensibility. It also earned him a spot in an unlikely sphere: the art world.
"I think most people involved in contemporary, avant-garde art would see it as such. This was not drunken thrill-seekers breaking into buildings on the weekend for kicks. He was thoughtful, intense and disciplined, and devoted to this as a practice," said Dave Dyment, the co-director of Mercer Union, one of the city's more prominent artist-run centres.
For Dyment, it wasn't a stretch to put Chapman's gentle incursions under the same rubric as a growing realm of public interventionist art — performance in the public sphere that offers similar questions about the structures society puts on our movements and interactions.
Dyment invited Chapman and Lerner to speak at Mercer Union just a few weeks before he died. He was ill, but his enthusiasm was unwavering. Over a 90-minute talk and slide-show on a sweltering July day, a packed house was riveted start to finish.
His passion was enthralling, Dyment said.
"I expected him to be more militant, pedantic maybe, but he wasn't at all. He was soft-spoken, humble and very concerned with the ethics of the activity. The dedication he showed to it — this was his vocation. That sealed it for me," Dyment said.
Ninjalicious, the legend goes, was born when Chapman was confined to St. Michael's Hospital in his early 20s, with weeks and hours to fill while undergoing yet another series of treatments. IV in arm, he poked into the hospital's hidden corners, breaking open the building's secret spaces.
But Clayton said it was really just the extension of a life-long fascination — with buildings, with architecture and with the structures that evolve to keep all but the authorized out of their dark corners.
Illness helped imbue Chapman with an urge to savour the whole world, not just the portions officially sanctioned for public viewing.
"I think people who are sick at a young age are just different," Clayton said. "It changes how you look at the world. For him, I don't think it was a seize-the-day thing so much as a deep appreciation of the world."
That appreciation wouldn't allow him to sit idly and watch it go by. "Rather than passively consuming entertainment, urban explorers strive to create authentic experiences," Chapman wrote in the introduction to Access All Areas.
It's as potent an encapsulation of his ethos as any: Don't follow, question. Don't be blind, look. Don't watch, do.
The spirit was infectious. Locally, the passing of Ninjalicious was marked on Sept.24, one month after his death, with a tribute gathering of family, friends and fans at the Don Valley Brickworks — fertile ground, no doubt, for Chapman's infiltrations.
But all over the world, tributes have poured in by the hundreds on the Urban Exploration Forum, from Australia, Europe and beyond — testament to his influence.
"Jeff brought humour, passion and a deep respect for humanity to his work," wrote n-rock, a forum user from Michigan. "He was good at demystifying powerful institutions — something that a lot of writers who care about social change try to do, but few succeed ... Let's remember him by passing along the grace he shared with us."
"I'll see you in every building, I'll see you in every bit of concrete. So long," wrote Cybertooth, in Rennes, France. Another, Ninjalocksmurf, imagined his next pursuit: "Heaven's maintenance tunnels will never be safe again."
For Lerner, the book has become both a keepsake, and a nagging reminder of what he's lost. "I realize now that I took it for granted — I guess I thought we would always be able to do this together," he said. "He enjoyed life so much. He saw things that other people wouldn't see. I just wish I could go exploring with him again." |
"the ghosts of old buildings are haunting parking lots
in the city of good neighbors that history forgot"
- 'subdivision', Ani DiFranco ** Urbania - http://urbania.ohlphotos.com |
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Axle
  
Location: Milton, ON
Gender: Male
Sieg oder Tod
| | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 3 on 10/17/2005 2:13 PM >
| | | | Awesome! Yeah I saw the article.
Celer at Audax
Para la Victoria Siempre Alemanes! |
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The Hitman's Daughter
 
Account Closed
Location: ottawa, canada
Gender: Female
hot pavement.
| | | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 4 on 10/17/2005 2:32 PM >
| | | | "Jeff Chapman scaled walls `with ladder of audacity'" makes me think of Simon.
good article.
richellesart.com
From now on and until the end of time, "Hip To Be Square" will conjure images of bloody bodies being hacked apart with axes.
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n-rock
Location: Oakland, CA, USA
| | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 5 on 10/17/2005 5:44 PM >
| | | | Nice article - nice to have a sympathetic voice in the press for once instead of the relentless X-Treme Sports kind of sensationalism. Another thing to be grateful to Ninj for I guess...
==================================
Warning: Prosecutors will be Violated |
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nobody
Location: VANCOUVER B.C.
Gender: Male
5:55 is a state of mind
| | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 6 on 10/17/2005 6:03 PM >
| | | | That was an excellent article, thank you for posting it. His influence will undoubtedly live on forever. N.
Operating Entirely With Bad Intentions |
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slotman
Location: Slotville, USA
Gender: Male
| | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 7 on 10/17/2005 6:08 PM >
| | | | Wow, that was well written...
Every moment of every day is a gift and should spent accordingly |
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trickmonster
Location: Larwence Park
Gender: Male
| | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 8 on 10/25/2005 1:22 AM >
|  | | | i dont even know him on any level except for his activitys in the site and it make makes me really sad
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Samurai
Vehicular Lord Rick
Location: northeastern New York
No matter where you go, there you are...
| | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 9 on 10/25/2005 1:52 AM >
| | | | articles like that make me glad that guys like Ninj had a chance to do something with their short lives. It also makes me incredibly sad that his life was cut so short. I mean, he was my age and did so much as sick as he was... I am glad I sort of knew the guy, even if it was just here.
"they always throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come."
Samurai
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Crossfire
Location: Kay-Dub
Gender: Male
Don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years.
| |  | | | Re: Ninjalicious Book Article - Toronto Star
<Reply # 10 on 10/25/2005 1:53 PM >
| | | | Posted by The Hitman's Daughter
"Jeff Chapman scaled walls `with ladder of audacity'" makes me think of Simon.
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I loved that old cartoon...
"Ninj In The Land of Exploration" is this new version.
C.
Disgruntled. |
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