Idiotic interventions and ludic inequality

[imomus]

It's late June. I'm at the Backjumps opening at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Kreuzberg. Actually, I'm there sort of by accident. I was at another opening the night before, and left my bike, so I'm back to pick it up. I wander in, and before long I'm being photographed (for my pirate eyepatch, mostly) by some people who'll put together a Backjumps book.

The Backjumps show is in an art gallery, but it isn't exactly an art show. Not like the drawing and painting opening held the night before, anyway. The flyer calls it "urban communication and aesthetics". Street art. The crowd are younger and cooler than last night's art crowd, if slightly less articulate. In the corridor there's a DJ scratching at some Technics turntables. All around the hall -- taped, in fact, to every single pillar -- are signs saying "Bitte nicht taggen!" Do not tag. Which is both ironic and appropriate -- and just a bit odd -- because this is a show mostly dedicated to those fearless urban pioneers, taggers and grafitti artists.

Now, I hate tagging. I hate how I can't see out of the windows of Berlin trams because kids have scratched their names into the glass. I hate the fact that even if I could see out, what I'd mostly see is people's stupid names scratched on public property. But never on private cars. Why the hell not cars, taggers? Afraid of being beaten up rather than celebrated as an artist?

Tagging has to stop. I mean, even to be celebrated it has to stop. Otherwise we'd all just be tagging on top of tags, and you'd never see the tags. The world would just become this horrible tangled mess and nothing would stand out. Before long you'd get people stealing stolen bikes, which would annoy the original thieves, and people appropriating appropriations and intervening in interventions. It would just never end.



But back to the Backjumps opening. The gathering irony is compounded by a film I join a reverent crowd in a darkened room to watch. In this film a masked man climbs a gigantic canvas Lavazza billboard at night on Alexanderplatz. He's a kind of James Bond of appropriationist intervention -- pretty fucking macho. He skillfully cuts around the figure of the sexy model advertising the coffee brand then daubs a message across the top: "Model kidnapped, returned for ransome". Cojones, amigo! Respect!

The sexy subversion wilts, though, when I walk out of the screening and almost collide with a Lavazza stand. They seem to be sponsoring the show. It's all a set-up. The brands haven't lost control after all. They've just upped their game, and paid some studs with spray cans to give them cred. There they are, underwriting this show: Nokia, Berlin Public Culture Funds, dozens of hip magazines and a website called Reclaim Your City, which won't let you enter before you've read a notice which declares: "The content of this website should not encourage any illegal behaviour. The sole purpose of all pictures shown on this website is to document and display artistic intervention in public space."



This call to responsibility reminds me of a satirical manifesto erratum slip I included with a 1994 box art project by artists Ian Forsyth and Jane Pollard. "Burn down the academy!" declared paragraph 17. But the erratum slip took quite a different tone. "Our thanks go to Reginald Longley of London Fire Brigade for pointing out that arson is, quite rightly, illegal. We do not for a moment endorse any act of fire-setting. We rather intended to represent, by 'The Academy', a state of mind, and by 'Burn down', a wish for peaceful, democratic change."



Verily, we live in the age of intervention. I've written articles hyping it myself -- an interview with British designer Alex Rich which I titled Gentle Interventions, after a show he once staged in London. I described how Alex and his friends in Abake once intervened in an East London park, repairing all the broken benches. When the council found out what was going on they were naturally furious. Only they could mend broken benches! What would the world be like, after all, if everyone went around mending things for their own ends? We'd soon be living in some kind of vigilante world, wouldn't we? Could you call in the interventionists to mend the benches they'd fixed when they broke again, for instance? Or would they be off at an art opening, or showing a client their portfolio?

Still, Alex Rich and Abake are the acceptable face of intervention, reclamation, re-appropriation. I like "gentle", and I like civic-minded. I like the idea of making little improvements to the world. Goody Twoshoes woz 'ere!

The unacceptable face of intervention is sponsored "subversion" -- that farcical moment when the streets are "reclaimed" from Nokia and Lavazza by masked guerillas who turn out -- gah! -- to be sponsored by Nokia and Lavazza. The unacceptable face of intervention is when Shepherd Fairey builds his Andre Giant image to the point (worldwide recognition and hip admiration) when he can sell it to a shoe company as a readymade brand, retrospectively turning the whole thing into an ad campaign. And, as Jonathan Jones pointed out in an excellent piece in yesterday's Guardian intent on reclaiming the streets from crap grafitti artists, the unacceptable face of intervention is bloody Banksy.



Now, I don't know much about Banksy. I've managed to stay out of the path of his hype machine. His work seems to be a set of lamely populist -- yet streetwise! -- Hallmark cards or Bill Tidy cartoons. I have to agree with Jones that it's marginally more witty than most grafitti and tagging, though.



I do know that Banksy was one of the targets of Charlie Brooker's satirical wrath in Nathan Barley, though. And something else Brooker was particularly incensed by in that show -- and particularly strong in spotting as a problem of our time -- was something we might call "ludic inequality". Nathan, supported by his private income and a vast sense of confidence and self-entitlement, plays while others work. He and his tribe act like overgrown, spoilt toddlers against a backdrop of real suffering. Nathan's "interventions" mostly consist of horrible -- and semi-murderous -- Jackass-style pranks on his workmate Pingu.



Now, have a look at this Pecha Kucha presentation by Ariel Schlesinger, from the last Berlin pecha kucha evening. It's called Minor Urban Disasters, the name Ariel -- an Israeli interventionist -- has also used for his Flickr pool. I enjoyed the presentation, which, like the Flickr slideshow, comes across like a series of micro-disasters reported on by a rolling news channel so desperate for news that it's taken to inflating the tiniest irregularities into massive crises.



During his presentation, though, it's the insinuation that Ariel caused some of the disasters himself (on quiet news days) that gets the biggest whoops and laughs from the crowd. In a way, this slideshow reminds me a lot of the investigations of ROJO, a Japanese group of artists, journalists, architects and designers who scour Japan for quirks just like the ones Ariel and friends found in Berlin, Paris and Tel Aviv. But ROJO don't set stuff on fire, or smash stuff for laughs, or tell you how to short a Coke machine.

So what Ariel really makes me think of is Israeli artist Yael Bartana's unsettling videos of Israelis driving 4X4s up and down sand-dunes on beaches Palestinians have been excluded from by (Banksy-decorated) security fences. He also makes me think of some of Doreen Massey's points about globalization. It's a hell of a lot easier for some people to flow, or to play, or just to goof off, than others.



Seeing a stack of delivery scooters Ariel cheerfully admits to having tipped over like dominos, I couldn't help thinking that while he goofed about for his designer friends, some poor scooter messengers had just had their working day worsened by this "intervention". Just as in Borat or a Michael Moore movie, I was made uncomfortable by the way the ludic, the comic and even the righteously subversive comes, all too often, at the expense of those less free.

That moral perspective is something I wouldn't expect an artist to lose sight of. As for "urban communicators", though, who knows?

Comments

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Taggen?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Any grafitti on your monastery walls, Eustace?

It would be nice to think it might eventually evolve into illuminations, or books of hours, or mosaics, or something.

[turkishb.livejournal.com]

It is nice to read this. I've sometimes felt that a certain amount of apologetics about tagging is communicated in order to seem racially respectful, or to try to give hip hop culture legitimacy.

[eustaceplimsoll.livejournal.com]

I'm not in my monastery yet Momus, but when I am you can rest assured I'll work a craft - beauty's what we're here for you know!

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

I think the most repulsive aspect of tagging is its constant "me, me, me." I'm sick of people whose sense of freedom is to scream their presence in the face of everyone else.

As for "Why the hell not cars, taggers?" - because they're gutless conformists as you suspect.

[sakuraamplifier.livejournal.com]

I'm so happy to learn I'm not alone in my hatred of tagging. It seems to have become something anyone with a taste for art is expected to appreciate, but I find it contemptible, both for the underlying "me, me, me" philosophy and, on a much more basic level, its ugliness.

banksy...

[(Anonymous)]

uuugghhh, banksy.

i cannot begin to express my disgust at how crazy about this guy people are here in the states. so so many art kids i know have suddenly decided to be radical street artists in the past year, largely thanks to this stuff. it's wild. radical subversion by way of pop culture. and they all have heir long rants about taking back the public space. taking it to the streets. i feel very middle-of-the-road about tagging, or any similar street art stuff. i'm not particularly for it or against it. there are valid arguments from both sides, in my mind. but the fact that it's being propagated by this artist whose book is sold at urban outfitters and who is being so deeply idolized by this whole young generation... like i said, wild.

[cargoweasel.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one who feels this way, in the last few months have seen the rise of individual or collective The Splasher (http://gothamist.com/2007/01/23/against_streeta.php) in new york, who goes around splattering paint on various works of street art, and accompanies the splashes with wheat pasted screeds decrying street artists as the vanguards of capital. Shepard Fairey's gallery show had a stink bomb nearly set off (http://gothamist.com/2007/06/22/breaking_allege.php) in it, by distinct but sympathetic people. It's been quite a story around here on the local blogs.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Oh thank God.
I´ve long lived in dread that you would support this awful habit like all the other artistic people who think they´re being liberal and innovative by approving of it.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Did I just agree with everything in this post? Yes, I think I did.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Someone's been reading their Hakim Bey (http://www.hermetic.com/bey/), eh?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I am not a bohemian. I'm a deeply devout shopkeeper, a lifelong follower of Franklin's maxims, which have worked very well for someone who hails from the lower castes. We love our gardens, our creature comforts, our simple pleasures. It takes a lot to get our sort to start smashing windows--we cling to peace and order until the last possible moment. We know how hard-won and precious it is, and don't take it for granted for a single second.

But even a boogie sort like myself has at least a grudging respect for the mooncalves on the fringes who at least walk the walk--some are even friends. But most of these new self-styled "radicals" are just punks, and not the good kind. I rail against them with some regularity; while the older "lifer" artists proclaim me as more punk than punk, the clueless kids think I'm a stuffy old fart. The suits don't help, but the only thing worse than an old man in a suit is an old man in Pumas.

These kids want to take real risks? Make something unapologetically beautiful, and give it away.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

..or here's a thought: do something constructive, like turn a dead vacant lot into a wildflower patch. (http://www.guerrillagardening.org/) Or a median strip into a hedge. Or graffiti with moss (http://www.storiesfromspace.co.uk/data/html/mossgraffiti.html) rather than spewing industrial carcinogens.

Nah--you would actually have to have a stake in things to do that.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

..or stop reading Vice.

[lame-no-antenna.livejournal.com]

quite possibly the best comment i've ever read here. maybe not the best, but really good advice.

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

All of these things happen every day, but it's rare that politics and aesthetics coincide neatly enough to catch our attention.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

My point of comparison is Japan. I love how, in Japan, there's almost no grafitti and tagging. You can see out the train windows. A building has its own shape and its own colour, not a tangle of ugly, self-asserting signatures. And I love how Japan's superlegitimacy and safety give its people freedom. The freedom, for instance, to use non-smashed vending machines at any hour of the night and day.

But Japan is a hip destination for influential evangelists of Western irreverence. People like Barry McGee, whose slideshow at the Watarium last month more or less instructed the Japanese to start tagging and grafitting because "it's an incredibly creative culture, the new high art". And we can imagine Ariel Schlesinger doing a pecha kucha presentation at SuperDeluxe, and telling his audience how to short circuit green tea vending machines with salted water in such a way that they give all their contents free to one person -- a smart designer, say -- rather than dispensing them to working people who are thirsty and can pay.

In Japan, these street culture evangelists should be listening rather than talking. The superlegitimate we culture has a lot to teach the vigilante me culture.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Actually, some cutting edge taggers do spray cars -- some even while the drivers are inside:

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I approve of this because the kids accept that what they're doing is an annoyance rather than art. Between tagging and cars, tagging is definitely the lesser evil as far as the quality of life is concerned.

What disturbs me here is that they tag only the people kind enough to stop and give them directions. That just ups levels of anomie and mistrust in the urban environment in the end. It saps trust and kindness to strangers. And again it just leads to this misanthropic kind of vigilante world where it's every man for himself and only the strong survive.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

"I approve of this because the kids accept that what they're doing is an annoyance rather than art"

It is bullying and intimidation. Violence against the person and the general intimidatory mood (exacerbated by 'tagging' and other street crime) is what keeps a whole load of people locked up in their cars rather than out on the streets or in public transport. One leads to the other.

You seem to think that most people stay in their cars because they love them. Some, admittedly, do. Most, I would argue, do so because the state of our streets and the kind of indignities forced on them by our appalling public transport infrastructure means that people feel there is little or no alternative.

You don't mention private houses. Taggers have already started to deface peoples' property. What started on railway lines (and isn't that significant, not with something owned by the rich, or the polluting, or the socially unacceptable, but the most democratic means of transport) has spread. It damages peoples' lives. It changes peoples' behaviour for the worse. Cars have a far more ambiguous effect on peoples' lives (it's part of the problem, being a mixture of good and bad).

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Have just returned from Rome, where everything is defaced. No beauty is sacrosanct.

Beauty? They don't know what beauty is.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Do you know what I hate most about this clip? Not the act itself, which is just thugishness masquerading as 'fun' - too much of that going around to get exercised about it. It's the 'yuk yuk yuk' glee of the morons watching. It's the sound of gangs in dark alleys - gleeful at the distress of others.

We live in a selfish bullying culture. Scum like this simply mimics what goes on at the top.

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, is there somewhere on the web that I can hear Spratch o Thyme - remember you had an MP3 from when it was on Radio 4(?)? I just want to let a friend of mine in Scotland hear it and I don't want to rip my CD.

Cheers

[akabe.livejournal.com]

these look to me like signs that berlin is inevitably reaching a certain , er, maturity (the kind places like sydney arrived at some 5 years ago) . another 2 years we might see berlin in Monocle's liveable cities list. :-(

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A Spratch O Thyme (http://imomus.com/mixingit.mp3), Mixing It, BBC Radio 3.

[(Anonymous)]

Brilliant - thanks a lot mate :o)