Street Art World by Alison Young

Street Art World by Alison Young

Author:Alison Young
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books


Stairs, squatted building on Melchiorstrasse, Berlin, 2013.

Normally a property owner would be horrified to discover floodwater damage. But for the owner of this building, floodwater would accelerate the decay that was needed in order to develop the site. The building was a Bauhaus design and was thus heritage listed, with constraints upon development. The owner couldn’t demolish it, but if it happened to fall apart on its own, he could then develop it into something new. Rory shrugged: ‘The Irish investor who owns the building has two options; he can let us stay and deal with all the problems associated with having artists in here, noise, insurance, paint fumes, what have you; or he can kick us out, and lock the gate, and have zero problems. He’s opting for the latter. From his point of view, I don’t blame him.’

I said my farewells to Rory, thinking how strange and how sad it was that the gradual decomposition of a Bauhaus building in which artists wanted to live and work was a rational business strategy in contemporary Berlin. The building would be in increasing disrepair until it fell down of its own accord. The artists would be dispersed, in search of space in which to live and work. The owner would enjoy tax deductions for several years, and would then either sell or be able to build apartments, at a further profit. Slipping past the chain-link fence, I had the sensation of crossing from one world, a hidden one in which street artists and graffiti writers had adapted available space to their needs, into another, in which owners derive financial profit in a direct line from their assets. The art being created within the building was not seen as an asset. It was a nuisance to be solved by eviction. Back out on the street, across the road from the postal depot, I looked again at the banner for the complex of luxury apartments that would soon be under way. It would be called neu West Berlin (‘new West Berlin’). Someone had graffitied on it: ‘Ost Berlin [East Berlin]: don’t forget’. Part of this street had been in the East; its exploitation by developers could now justify an assertion that flew in the face of the street’s history: this is the ‘new West’. On a street that used to be divided by the starkest of physical borders, the walls that would be built in this property development were named as a new horizon, rather than a divisive boundary. But a border still exists between those who seek to profit from the city and the adaptive activities of the street artist.

No one could know from the street that only 6 metres away was a derelict Bauhaus building filled with illicit art and squatting artists. Perhaps this is what will happen to street art in the end. I imagined a city in which street artists withdraw into hidden spaces, subway tunnels and abandoned buildings, leaving the street to tourists, residents and traders. In



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