City says... - wall painting performance, full-HD video with sound - variable size - since 2008

 

Hundreds of graffitis collected from the facades of cities, sprayed onto one wall over and over again. This has been done in Berlin, Milan, Istanbul, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Athens, Stuttgart, etc. 

 

»‘City Says ...’ is an ongoing work that I’ve already done in all sorts of cities around the world. To me, it’s a series of zeitgeisty city portraits. While roaming the streets for weeks, I collect hundreds of pieces of graffiti sprayed or painted on façades. Since I’m particularly interested in the potential activism in each city’s population, I only collect things written on walls with the intention of being read and understood by others. The façades of a city are a platform where people publicly express their thoughts, desires, dreams, opinions and demands, etc. By reading them, we discover what society has on its mind at the time in question. I then carry out a performance in which I spray the graffiti I’ve collectedon the same wall in countless concentrated layers.« 

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Installation view at Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, Germany