"I want to be a part of the city that i live in"
(Swoon:Toyshop, in an interview to reclaim your city, source)
[Reclaim your city, some where in Berlin, Source]
The City's facade is becoming more and more dominated by visual pieces of information. Advertisements, shop’s logos, traffic signs, instruction signs, and many other forms of physical / visual communication different dominate the streets we walk.
Converting them into a large information hardware store in which we can easily find our way.
[Street Signs in Tokyo, Source]
Nowadays it might be hard to imagine a city empty of visual signs.
The Austrian Photographer Gregor Graf has published a series of Photographs called the Hidden Town Project, showing his home town of Linz after a careful removal of all its symbols and signs.
Martin Gittins, of Kosmograd, has described the results of Graf’s experiment in one his posts regarding the ‘City of Signs’ as “unsettling, the cities seem deserted and uninhabited”.
[Hidden Towns Project, Gregor Graf, Source]
Graf him self describes the city situations which intrigued the project in the fallowing Text;
“The city as living space is today no longer shaped by the individuals who inhabit it. At the textural level - with words, symbols, logos, directional and traffic signs, commands and prohibitions-the only elements allowed are those that serve the end of law or consumption. Free expression, such as graffiti or the unauthorized hanging of posters in the public space is punishable by law. The real city is increasingly becoming a personality-drained world of corporationsand branding, coupled with the proliferation of rigorous regulations dictating how individuals are expected to behave. Modernism tried to rid architecture of ornament-advertisingand directional systems have now brought it back, under a new guise and with a new function. City centres have evolved into "literary" spaces. New technical possibilities (glass, large print, tickers, digital text production technologies, mega displays, transparent buildings) turn buildings facades into another medium for conveying news, with whole buildings becoming there own logo.“ [Gregor Graf description of the hidden Towns project In Linz, source / Full article on Kosmograd]
In addition to such, “legal”, visual city activities, there is also a second layer to the city’s façade.
Under this we may consider all of those little human “remainders” which brings the city to life.
One might confuse those to be little pieces of garbage, trash, or even in some cases vandalism, but the fact is that without them, the city would return to its death like appearance seen on Graf’s Photos.
One group who had actually dedicated them self into the preservation and new creation of these little side walk pieces of humanity are various Street Artists.
Usually being treated as criminals conducting acts of vandalism, artists working with Graffiti, stickers, posters, Video projection or any other sort of Visual or Physical installation taking place in the streets is layering our city with another taste of democracy.
Wikipedia, describes Street art as “any Art developed in Public Spaces” [source] but yet again most of those activities, done by a private individual are considered to be illegal.
The Possibility to use the city as ones canvas is as sane as being able to walk in it.
It means if Nike or Adidas are able to set huge signs upon our walls, then enabling the public to do the same just seams logical.
Legal or not, the public has claimed his doe, and through millions of little contributions had made the walls into an historical collage of human opinions, making a simple walk around the block (when done consciously) into a journey trough millions of little funny stories.
[Street Art Works in Hamburg, Source]
Being the contribution of many different individuals, with usually no gain proposes but self representation, or the change of opinions or states of mind, the walled platform of city’s Public Spaces is in a way very similar to true democracy, taking the representative figures out of the equation, leaving the citizens with the power of the written words.
[Street Art Works in Berlin, Kreuzberg, Source]
It is quite interesting to try and track the rules under which those little contributions to the city’s skin were made. One might Noticing for example that it is almost impossible to find a graffiti piece on a new building, or on a new designed shop door. The artists between them self also have their own sets of rule regarding what can be repainted, erased, continued or left untouched and as no one has ever wrote these set of rules, I guess we can only imagine them as a healthy human comprehension, which leads most of those casual chaotic activity in our lives.
The only remaining question is; how can it then still be illegal?
Reclaim your city is a Berlin based street art community which is dedicated, and to some extend responsible, for some of Berlin’s amazing street art pieces.
look out side your window,,,, check out thier works.
THIS BLOG of course DOES NOT SUPPORT ANY KIND OF ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES...
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