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“Re-Writing the Streets” Artist Statement: Dave the Chimp (U.K.)

Artist statements for Re-Writing the Streets: The International Language of Stickers are starting to come in.  Here is one from Dave the Chimp. My name is Dave the Chimp.  I became a Chimp, among other reasons, because I was sick of humans.  I’ve learnt to deal with them a little better these days! I’m a skateboarder, and stickers are part of my culture.  “Send a buck for stickers and catalogue” is a phrase that was burnt into my teenage mind while reading skate magazines, and you can bet that when I finally got to visit America I stuffed a lot…

Stickers in Poznan, Poland

I made a quick overnight trip to Poznan, Poland, this past week at the invitation of Lukasz Niparko, a recent SLU alum.  He and I (and others) will be contributing to Weaving the Streets, a new blog on SLU’s The Weave: Mediocracy Unspun.  Part of Weaving the Streets will include photo-documentation of street art from around the world—a people’s archive, as we are calling it.  Poznan doesn’t have very many stickers, we learned, but has a bunch of wheatpastes and stencils.  Here is a wheatpaste that shows how to make stencils.

Re-Writing the Streets: The International Language of Stickers

Re-Writing the Streets: The International Language of Stickers A Traveling Exhibition Curated by Catherine Tedford and Oliver Baudach Overview In the last twenty years, street art has evolved dramatically from the graffiti that peppered subway stations, back alleys, and train yards, and was typically seen as vandalism.  Today, new forms of visual communication are created in public spaces, often attracting viewers in more contemplative and/or interactive ways.  Street art stickers, or simply “stickers,” have emerged as a vehicle for self-expression and an effective way to engage passersby.  Stickers may be used to “tag” or claim a space and make it…

Kreuzberg stickers – tagging geo-tagged images with words

For my new geo-tagging project, I’m trying to come up with a manageable number of consistent subject terms to describe what a sticker is about, i.e., what people in library and information science call creating an authority control or set of keywords (index terms).  One can go a little crazy in this endeavor, because there are so many comprehensive guides to refer to, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings, the Getty Research Institute Art & Architecture Thesaurus, various ARTstor Subject Guides, and plain old common sense.  My goal is to narrow it down to about 20 keywords, and…

Blockupy Frankfurt stickers

Stickers and street posters for Blockupy Frankfurt and Blockupy Deportation Airport (also in Frankfurt) now blanket Berlin. What I find interesting, though, is the contrast between these in 2013 (above) compared to these in 2012 (below).

Berlin’s revolutionary past

I’ve read in a few different places about someone who gives walking tours in Berlin that focus on the city’s historical revolutionary past.  You can read Walk don’t burn: Revolutionary walking tours from the Exberliner and May Day Tourism in Berlin: Anti-Capitalist Tour Guide Offers Riot Sightseeing from Spiegel Online International, but also check out the actual Revolutionary Berlin Web site where they outline German Revolution and May Day Riots tours.  Here is the description for the German Revolution tour. How Berlin workers toppled the Kaiser and ended the war in 1918 The workers’ movement and the First World War…