Transmediale '08 'Conspire'- Berlin

part 3

'Public Signatures' was an interesting series of films shown at Transmediale, and fitted well with the theme of Conspire. The first was of a topic familiar to me already, and of great intrest, called 'Culture Jamming' by David Schwertgen. His documentary showed a variety of different ways he and his peers have produced campaigns in reaction to corporate practice and advertising. Viral games, websites, public installations/information events are some of the ways they have tried to make their voices heard, as they make their comment on how big corporations ruthlessly take over public space, exploit workers, advertise in schools, promote greedy consummerism etc etc. While they realise that their work won't bring down the corporations, it's important that they raise awarness of these issues, for they can change public opinion to some degree; anything that tries to make the average consummer wake the fuck up from to whats going is a good thing. 'No Logo' by Naomi Klien is well worth a read for other information on some of these issues, as well as the Canadian film 'Corporation' from a few years back, and while your at it, the movie 'Zeitgeist' which is out at the moment are all worth a look to see things that the advertisers and other media usually omit from the public eye.

Another film in the series documented a street artist Mario Mentrup, who made grafitti and installations on the streets of Wuppertal in Germany, as well as using a power jet water-spray as a paintbrush to blast away built up grime on railway sidings and derelict buildings, a novel kind of negative grafitti. Bemused police looked on, not sure what to do as his team hung a huge photograph printed onto fabric under a bridge. He had an interesting twist on the usual grafitti artists work, doing imaginative things to public spaces.

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