In just a few days
of living in Amsterdam, one notices that the ubiquitous street art scrawled
across the city’s brick and concrete scenery quickly blends into the
environment of urban expression. Most of the drippy ligatures or spraypainted
iconography are crude repetitions of some name or pseudonym, generous outbursts
of Satanist ramblings, or a sprinkling of the occasional movie quote or
inspirational message. It seems safe to
assume that most are the brash and hasty creations of egotistical teenagers and
young adults, and these local exhibitors consequently garner little to no attention
from passing citizens. Curiously, among the bright neon signs promising
intrigue of live sex shows, marijuana, and all other sorts of base desires, the
crudeness of the prevalent graffiti is lost on the daily commuter.
It must then be the
existing open expression of the city that forces street art to a higher
standard in Amsterdam: any message put forth seemingly needs to compete with
the widely available legal offerings of sex and drugs. Artist collective n8
strives to accomplish this goal with their project “EDITS,” a composition of twenty
or so locally submitted works printed on 8 feet by 12 feet boards that
currently wrap around a corner at the nexus of Hendrikdijk, Hammerstraat, and
Spuistreet. This “temporary exhibit,” as an attached gallery-esque placard
formally reads, “combines the diversity of museums and the energy of [Amsterdam’s]
young creatives” through illustrative interpretations of a number of the city’s
most famous institutions, including museums, churches, and historical
buildings. These range from the
beautiful to the controversial to the absurd, with such subject matter as
starfields, typographic exercises, photographs, and more. One depiction of De
Oude Kerk represents the church building as a leaky and drooping inflatable,
perhaps a commentary on the declining influence of church orthodoxy on modern
“anything goes” Amsterdam culture; it is aptly titled “OK!”. Another, named “Layers of Time,” composites several
semi-transparent vintage and modern photographs of identical areas of the city
to document the transitions of horses to cars and bikes, hand-painted shop
signs to neon glowers, dirt roads to paved ones. The site is a striking
backdrop to the ebb and flow of human and vehicle traffic at the intersection,
and often elicits a pause from the passersby and tourists.
With Centraal
Station situated directly opposite the decorated corner of the intersection,
the impromptu gallery has an enviable location for any showcasing artist. However, a second glance reveals that these
boards block an unattractive view of a construction site full of machinery and
dirt pits. But this gallery’s purpose is
not just to cover up ugliness in an attempt to maintain an untarnished façade for
the visiting tourist, or even to inspire people to simply visit the museums. Given their sheer number and central
proximity, they are impossible to miss. But it’s easy to see how this simple gallery
would both educate visitors and give young citizens a modern monument of
national pride—whether one that embraces progressive church movements or the
advancement from horse to automobile. Upon
further inspection of the project’s website, images of the artboards at various
other construction locations around the city hint at n8’s efforts to distribute
the artworks around the city’s varying neighborhoods, thereby turning the
exhibit into an amorphous skin around whatever environment it occupies. The accompanying website also reveals the exhibit’s
curation process, which continues to openly invite artists to submit their
work. This open opportunity results in amateur graffiti artwork sharing a
display alongside working graphic designers’ creations, and provides a worthier
outlet to the mediums than in dark alleyways or illegally on private
properties. Having these young artists’ works featured in full color and
resolution display (an extreme rarity given the scale of the works) in EDITS
may inspire other young creatives to aspire to become the next featured artists.
Think, for
example, of the American equivalent of covering construction work: boarding up a
façade with plywood, which—regardless of the number of “Post no Bills” stencils
—end up a hotspot for posters, flyers, and of course spraypaint graffiti. But in EDITS’ case, n8’s decision to showcase
local art works wonders: no graffiti or bills mar the artworks, and thus people
respect and pay attention to the installation. This ambitious yet effective redirection of
artistic effort ultimately is a successful one, perhaps a model that should be
adopted elsewhere. It figures that, in a city where drugs and sex are made accessible
and safer through small regulations, a small intervention is similarly
beginning to make street art a local norm as well.
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