Monday, January 26, 2009

The Graffiti in Berlin

The Graffiti, oh my god, the graffiti in Berlin. First of all, it's everywhere. I'm surprised my backpack hasn't been tagged walking down the streets. There's this attitude that nothing's sacred; no building, no streetsign, no storefront, no window, no fire escape, no bathroom wall (well, okay), no nothing. TAGGED! And the graffiti isn't bo-ring, it's actually rather telling. Take this image for example.



We can see here a grandmother holding a vial with a fetus, a bearded woman holding a dove and wearing a sailor hat, giant fern trees (which, by the way, are completely impossible to find in Berlin). And what's that? A horsey, saying hi? Adorable!

There are layers of meaning here. Like what do those birds mean? And why are they flying toward the grandmother's head? Is there some sort of latent anti-stem-cell message here with the fetus in the vial? Is this grandmother actually an evil woman who wants to steal your fetuses to perform research on them? Which came first? The beard or the lady? (I'm thinking the lady) The balloon or the origami hat? (I'm thinking both. At the same time).

Like this wall, Berlin is a city that is alive and constantly being re-thought, added to, torn down, parodied, fucked with. Berlin trusts its residents in a way American cities don't. It trusts its citizens to fuck where they want to fuck, paint where they want to paint. There are no subway turnstiles here; although cops occasionally patrol the cars in plainclothes, it is generally trusted you'll pay to go on your way.

See...



Old and new.

I took that photo at a playground in Mitte. Children were playing there while I took the picture, even though they're outside the frame. There isn't this idea that graffiti symbolizes where you can and cannot go, where you can and cannot take your children. It's not associated with poverty, or with crime, it's associated with the natural ebb and flow of a living and breathing city. (That slide's angle looks pretty severe no? I wonder about the ending on that ride.)

The graffiti on the Berlin wall was well-documented. Here's a picture of Soviet leader Brezhnev passionately kissing East German leader Erick Honecker. The caption in both German and Russian reads: "God! Help me survive this deadly love!"



But after the wall was torn down, I bet a lot of people thought that was it. The city would build itself up again, and graffiti would go away as prices for buildings went up. I don't think we're really seeing that in Berlin. I think people are comfortable with the fact that others are going to deface their property in artful ways. Even in "nicer" areas like around Auguststrasse, where all the galleries are, graffiti is in plain view. It's not being painted over.

No comments: