5.04.2006

Guerrilla scrubbing.

A stencil and a power washer sprayed this anti-pollution message on grimy Chicago sidewalks. Has anyone seen this idea used by non-institutional street artists?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know there was a guy in the UK who did graffiti by selectively scrubbing away the grime from highway overpasses. They wanted to charge him with defacing public property but he (I believe) was found innocent because he wasn't defacing the property, he was cleaning (part of) it. I'll be dammed if I can remember the guy's name.

Sornie said...

It's a great idea and probably a rather effective way of getting messages to people, sort of along the vein of guerilla advertising.

Anonymous said...

In the 1980s, in Washington, DC [and probably elsewhere], we increasingly saw the image of a splayed woman on the sidewalk. The words ominously read:
"Another woman was raped here."

In the late 1990s in Berlin I was taken on a tour of remarkable street art. The city of Berlin sponsored a neat project commemorating the Wall. About 5 different life-size silhouettes of rabbits were imbedded in the sidewalks and streets of what had previously been the never-land between the 2 parallel parts of the wall. This silent memorial commemorates the wall for thosse who know where it once was. Apparently rabbits flourished in the area between the walls.

DT