Ok I received a copy of the book. (thanks
Esher). Here are a few thoughts about it.
The book is about an event that took place in a german city nammed
Wuppertal in September 2006.
To answer quickly to the comments above, no it is not a printed commercial.
That's right that a company -who sells soda- brought financial & organizational support to invite 22 artists to take-over public space in Wuppertal without any authorisation.
J.R. says in the book : "
The "professional" organization of something completely illegal...".
But the company doesn't ask to have logos around the pieces created like in any festival. It was
guerilla marketing without a logo. In french i would have used the word "mécène" ("
patronat"?)
The book is -of course- about every artist projects with interesting interviews, but this is also a book about the
interaction between art and company money.
There is an interesting article from
Franz Liebl a professor of Strategic Marketing at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Comments are not naive or excessively enthousiast about the Red Bull project (yes that's the company behind the project)
Extract: "
In a time when graffiti(along with street-art) is well on its way to being recoded from an "aesthetics of resistance" into simple "street art style", a sponsor wouldn't gain much authenticity by just superficially referring to such styles, for that's something even Deutsche Bank has come to do."
Now let's talk about the artists who are :
Akim, Blu, JR, Os Gemeos & Nina, Zasd, Zevs...
Some of them did their usual stuff like Zevs and his Karsher. And other one tried to do something related to the city.
JR that we have a bit critised in this forum for showing again and again the same photos in every city, had one of the most interesting project: He photographied Wupertal residents without their knowledge and placed the portraits around the most central locations in the city.
Os Gemeos & Nina covered the wall of an abandonned tunnel with groups of figures.
Nixfitti painted over tagged walls but did so without any permission, making vandalism and renovation identically illegal...
Dr Innocent painted street furnitures in white, asking the question of whether white is dirty or clean.
Mare139 displayed a sculpture in a podium of a garden. But in the end the city council felt it was was too dangerous to leave it in public and made plans to remove it.
There's also a large poster from Zeus and a DVD included with the book. But i haven't watched it yet.
We come at night, is an interesting book because of all the interviews and texts. There are finally not that much books about street-art & graffiti that we can advice that are not an another photo book.
additional infos at :
http://www.outsides.de/
True,I thought the same...why "corporate"?
)