I See an Art Wall and I Want to Paint It Black
File
under WTF WERE THEY THINKING?
Recently, under cover of night, vandals applied paint to the
walls of an innocent building in Berlin . Ironically, they weren’t blasting graffiti
bombs all over the dump—they were painting OVER two of the most famous street
art wall murals in Berlin . Then they talked to the media. Then they sounded like media-groomed
art-tards with carefully-prepared sound bites like “We felt it was time for (the
artwork) to vanish, along with the fading era in Berlin’s history that they
represented” and “The white–well, in this case black–washing also signifies a
rebirth: as a wake-up call to the city and its dwellers, a reminder of the
necessity to preserve affordable and lively spaces of possibility, instead of
producing undead taxidermies of art.”
Who asked you to do it?
The ACTUAL artist (Blu)? I don’t
think so. You say you were ‘co-creator’
of the murals and yet your ‘credentials’ as a ‘cultural scientist and curator
focusing on art in the public domain’ sound like happy horseshit prepared for
you by the people who actually paid you to paint over the walls. While the rest of Berlin
is subject to hostile takeover from gentrification investment whores, you just
decided to kill the art in a pre-emptive strike against yourselves. Art suicide?
The problem with your reasoning is that art is a creative process, not a
destructive one. If we need any more
proof of your collusion with sneaky developers, just look at the big fence
around the property. Somebody unlocked
the gate for you and your crane. Did the
developers provide the crane as well, or is that a standard tool for scrappy
street artists? By working with the
developers to blacken Blu’s art, you tar yourself with the same brush.
These particular murals had meaning. They were not just tags left by random dogs spraying their turf. These paintings were carefully thought out and executed by an internationally famous street artist from
A year ago I was walking by the now-deceased art on a
similarly mild winter day. The simple
white wall figures loomed large over some squatters in a field. There were
still a few shanties left in Camp Cuvry, the open-air squat beneath the
graffiti giants. I was able to walk in
and drink beer with some of the remaining campers. I did not envy them in their uphill struggle
against the developers; nor did I envy them sleeping in a field in the winter. I shared beer with them for the privilege of talking with them a while before their inevitable
ousting. Their eviction was imminent
simply because they were sitting on a view of the river. Riverfront developer Mediaspree’s policy up
until now has been: 1) buy every dilapidated thing along the river (occupied or
not), 2) drive out the ones who won’t be bought out.
While I was writing a story on Berlin's Beach Bars a few years ago, a few of the bar managers were packing their shit
while they were speaking to me. Others
warned me that within a very short time there would be no places for ordinary
people to have a drink with a view of water.
Only high rise condos and office buildings would remain. High rise condos and office buildings seem
perfectly reasonable in cities like Los Angeles
or Tokyo , but in Berlin
they are about as useful as an asshole on your elbow.
KIEZ STATT PROFITWAHN!
(Neighborhoods Instead of Profit Madness)
The majority of Berliners do not like what is happening to their city. And this majority is not just a bunch of grungy slackers crying about change; all of them embrace the idea of
They came, they saw, they left their creative mark. Then the developers conquered.
