REVIEW: OVERKILL BY LEIF MAGNE TANGEN AND JAN CHRISTENSEN PUBLISHED IN NEUE REVIEW, SEPTEMBER 04
(Rens, Copenhagen)
The Berlin-based graffiti magazine Overkill has existed since 1992 and recently opened its own shop for spray paint, publications and accessories in Köpenickerstrasse 195 A (www.overkillshop.com). Together with the Polish publication Brain Damage, Overkill has collaborated on an issue dedicated to the last twenty years of graffiti in Berlin (issue June 2004,) which features interviews and numerous photographs of graffiti dating back to the beginning of that time.
Brain Damage/Overkill presents a short history of the development of graffiti from west-Berlin and how it spread after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and gives an example of some graffiti battles that even found the attention of the public media by featuring a story on the enormous GHS/SGS block letter roof-top piece at Friedrichstrasse (2003-2004). You’ll read stories of graffiti writers painting trains, and the editorial even briefly confirms the sad stories about this scene where five influential writers died in graffiti related incidents within the short period of a little more than a year.
Today the bombing of the train, U- and S-Bahn system continues with unprecedented force. At the moment, because of the modernisation of the S-Bahn carriages, you might actually see panel pieces (graffiti pieces below the windows of the trains,) and an occasional whole-car (an entire top-to-bottom, end-to-end train car covered in painted letters,) because there are not enough new trains and the BVG is not always able to clean the painted trains before they leave the yards to go into service. Berlin is also a city with many inner-city pieces covering the walls, fast silver pieces on the roof-tops and parts of the city see extensive bombing of tags. The police has its own force called GIB (Graffiti In Berlin) which investigates vandalism and seeks to destroy the graffiti crews in which the writers organise themselves. The most prolific crews at the moment might be said to be KO, DRM, MRN, EMU, KHC, CBS, RCB, OBS and BAD. In addition to these ruling crews there are something like another fifty serious crews with many members that regularly paint. The groups are often loosely organised, but writers from various crews might also work together and even collaborate on bigger pieces. Maintaining a crew identity also enables the writers to keep a certain anonymity in
relation to the investigators who try to lock them down.
Mischief, Art
The motivation for graffiti principally clashes with the ideas of fine art as it lacks the academic discourse and the ability to distance itself from the medium and the urban setting, and graffiti seldom relay much apart from the notions of vandalism and the closed-circuit idea of bombing. Then again, fine art may sometimes be described as series of conceptually removed practices of tongue-in-cheek wisecracks. The graffiti artist’s conviction to grab any available space and show his or hers work to the world despite the obvious illegality of this action and defying public disapproval, proves a certain kind of commitment that cannot be paralleled in fine art. Indeed, not to forget, there are interesting moral and ethical issues raised by works of contemporary art which stretches the rules of acceptance, especially regarding ideas and imagery referring to politics, sex or violence, and there are intriguing copyright discussions regarding appropriation. But even though some of the art works dealing with such issues may be considered illicit, the institutionalised definition of fine art represents a plausible cultural excuse which does not include the more aggressive expression of graffiti. It’s worth mentioning, though, that the contemporary art discourse quite literally feeds on underground movements and counter-cultural phenomenon in order to sustain itself, as artists, curators and critics wade through these references in their search for interesting subject matter.
One could say that contemporary art is more willing to confirm status quo than graffiti, but this is only partly true – one might say that art is slightly conservative (at least fine art is), but then again graffiti is also value conservative. The actual aesthetics of street art is an extremely narrow-minded practice, starting with the limitations presented by the medium of the spray paint, posters/stickers and ink markers, and the imagery of urban backdrops, letters (more or less abstracted), characters, and a few metaphors like flying eye balls, the symbol of the crown, entwined rail road tracks and exploding brick walls. Like art, and rock, it has its standards and guidelines which are not to be broken. Follow them and you’ll be ok. In this sense you will not find practice similar to the notion of the avant-garde within graffiti.But even though graffiti might not represent a vanguard art form, graffiti writers do indeed stand up for themselves and their work like artists of academic fine art rarely do. Graffiti is in a way also an elitist movement – writers themselves are the only people who are able to really relate to other writers’ work in and see the full context (which demands regular visits to writers’ favourite spots and reading fanzines like Overkill,) and it is like the scene maintains the idea of the cliché of the struggling artist outside of society. On the note of mischief, contemporary art rarely performs actions that are truly vexatious or annoying. People might find contemporary art upsetting, but they are mostly confronted with this within the context of the art institution – they are not confronted with the idea of graffiti as an art form when they find the facades of their streets covered in spray paint.
This is the difference; people can, in most situations at least, choose for themselves when to be confronted with contemporary art, which is a fact that might inhibit art from publicly triggering truly thought provoking issues, while graffiti – with its immediate visibility, has the possibility of even expressing political slogans in aggressive manners and proves a society out of complete control.
Then, though art might still seem hidden within the expanded notion of the art institution, it finds its way to numerous publications, popular culture, graphic design, advertising and academic discourse. While on the other hand, graffiti is an omnipresent art form in the big city, but only covered and seriously debated on its own terms by underground fanzines like Overkill. Then again, for their work and the long-term engagement with this scene, Overkill holds the kind of credibility and respect which is much seeked, but not rarely found, by other sub-cultures and general scenes of popular culture.