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Oh, well, it's OK in Germany
By adamg on Sat, 02/10/2007 - 12:20pm
The Herald reports on those alleged outlander graffiti artists arrested at a Red Line yard yesterday before they could mark up trains and attend a naked-dancer soiree at a secret Fort Point location (oh, OK: 327 Summer St., but don't let anybody know) tonight. The Globe explores the possibility that one of our favorite LiteBriters was slated to attend the party.
One of the people arrested is Marius Schmieling of Dortmund, Germany. Schmieling, 25, he started tagging when he was 12 (in German, translated at Babelfish).
Germans apparently have a different attitude toward graffiti than we do. Rather than try to eliminate it entirely, some German cities hire taggers to take care of individual subway/monorail stations (hmm, actually, anybody remember when Cambridge-Lee Industries let people tag up their wall near the Allston turnpike entrance - as long as they stayed within the silohuettes of people?). Dortmund hired Schmieling to "arrange" one station.
Last year, he participated in a project to spray paint 66 fiberglass winged rhinos. Here's his.
Portrait of the artist as a young rhino designer:
Free tagging:
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Comments
Horse-Apfels!
The Krauts are just as pissed off about Graffiti as we are. I recently attended a transport trade show in Berlin (Innotrans) and more than one vendor was there showing off the latest in anti-graffiti technology!
It is a big problem in Europe because the railyards are not as well fenced off as ours, and the systems there will "sleep" trains all along the lines so as to facilitate frequent service from the daily opening.
Germany and graffiti
I'm sure that Germany property owners get just as made as American property owners do at graffiti on their property. But my experience there clearly shows that Germans in general don't view graffiti the way we do (at least when it happens to someone else). I've talked to a number of Germans who just don't get why we get so upset about buildings being spray-painted.
My impression is that graffiti caught on as a form of protest in the last days of the Berlin wall, and the trend still hasn't died down.
Something I couldn't imagine
The T hiring a tagger to "design" a station and keep the other taggers away.
Berlin Wall
Folks, do remember that the Berlin Wall was something very ugly and very despised by the West-Berliners. (I vividly recall Nina Hagen declaring it "a shithole" during a performance at the Channel on Necco Way)
Also, some trivia, the Wall was always in DDR/GDR/East German territory or the territory of the Soviet Sector of Berlin (generally referred to as "East Berlin").
Visitors to Checkpoint Charlie from 1961 to 1989 will recall the white line that was painted on Zimmerstrasse was about 20 feet in front of the actual wall and was never ever crossed either by U.S. Soldiers or West Berlin Police officers. That's because the line was the border and technically, the graffiti-ing was being done by the taggers outside of West Berlin/the Western Allied sectors of Berlin. In other words, the West Berlin cops could not touch them and if the East German border guards or U.S./French/British military did anything to stop them, it might create an international diplomatic or military incident (e.g. WW3).
So while that particular graffiti was somewhat condoned as a protest against Honecker and his "Anti-Fascist Bulwark", I really think that the average Joe ("Jerry"?) in today's Germany dislikes defaced property as much as you and I do.
fuck yourself!.the krauts
fuck yourself!.the krauts