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What makes the Santa Fe quarter ideal for that?

Santa Fe is an old, marginal neighbourhood in downtown Bogota, plagued with problems such as prostitution, stealing, drug dealing and child abuse.
Throughout 2007 we worked to reclaim this space: a place where we could offer an element of diversity to the neighbourhood and share another reality with its inhabitants for a few days.

How did you get all these street artists together?

That’s what makes Desfase interesting: the gathering of people with different intentions, images, techniques and lastly languages all using the streets as a common space.
Our challenge is to offer interesting and sufficient spaces for them, to inspire work and dialogue. Both the friendliness that the streets generate and the interest that many urban artists have in meeting and visiting other places helps us achieve this. Additionally, we rely on the institutional and private support from those that have believed in our project.

How tough are the controls on graffiti in Colombia in general?

Over here, street art is not such a big phenomenon. Even though the city has lots of free spaces for graffiti and advertising, there is no rigorous control on this art form and its diverse manifestations.
In this way, the street art scene is very peaceful.

That’s great to hear! But still, do the police take sprayers in?

This rarely happens. We have created a peaceful street art environment: in abandoned spaces, we can paint freely – even during the day. As a result, most graffiti and street artists do it this way.

However, if they take you in, many things can happen. Sometimes you can talk to them, explain what you’re doing and nothing bad happens – they let you go and finish what you were doing. At other times, they may detain you for a few hours and take note of your ID. And, in the worst-case scenario, they’ll take you to a Permanent Justice Unit (UPJ) for twenty-four hours.