Top: Swet Denmark
Bottom Left: Cave Ais - Payday
Bottom Right: Tele - Fight on

Crossover


Text: Ruskig
Translation: Ulrika Mars

Claus Carstensen Artist. Professor Det Kongelige Kunstakademiet Köpenhamn

Do you know any graffiti-artists?

Their are a few studying at the Kunstakademiet where Claus works as a professor, further he tells me that he worked together with a couple of artists within a project he called Crossover: After searching a while he got hold of City and Cave and the meeting resulted in, amongst others, the pieces Pay Day, Fuck Up and Nom de Guerre/ Defaced. Part of the recipe in the co-operation is the clash in between the symbolical territories represented by the graffiti-artists and Claus Carstensen as part of the academy and art-institutions.

These art-pieces would of course not be shown in Zero-tolerance-Sweden as they contain one of the most controversial kinds of graffiti-aesthetics: tags. But Claus is certain his pictures would be shown somehow.I would find a space and show my pictures anyway.

He says that the art-world is an exclusive space, almost like a sect, following given conditions and unspoken rules. The graffiti-artists are forced to be part of the system. Questions like Where? How? Why? etc. are just as important within the academy besides technical skills. If the artist is familiar with these rules he can also find a great freedom.

Several of the graffiti artists who have gone through the Academy stop painting graffiti OR they make a clear distinction between painting graffiti, and "making art"

When graffiti travels onto the canvas, you miss out on something crucial: The site specific.

Further he talks about his meeting with Cave and City. He calls it defacement, a kind of destruction. What constructs also destroys. Production. Destruction. All design is reconstruction? . Symbolically graffiti takes over the public space. The subjective becomes the collective. I come from an art-context that works more as a conversation on a mental ground whilst graffiti is a more physical and concrete risen from a subculture. A Crossover arises, "Deface mine pictures, I asked them."

Tags?

Completely harmless. Tags are completely harmless, It's just aesthetics. Claus says. Construction of identity. But how do you construct an identity? Tags constitute a problem in society. A symbiotic power play arises. As graffiti is anonymous: society can't handle it. Society is built on identification. Everyone has a name, gender, social security-number, and a home. Things that lead to that they are controlled. That society is controlled. Tags work as homeless: the identification can't be done. And what's more; they are everywhere.

Claus tells me an example of society turning the tables. Recently, in the summer 2001, the Dansk Folkparti presented a list of 5000 names of new Danish citizens in a very big advertising campaign in the biggest Danish newspapers. Muslims who had been given citizenship. This is the opposite. A form of public racism. To expose: To create a feeling of insecurity.

We continue talking about the individual as opposed to the collective, Defaming-campaigns, Claus (as well as others) confirms that graffiti artists, to his experience, aren't more criminally inclined or use more drugs than others.

If you stop graffiti, you hinder freedom of speech. On the other hand you can claim that graffiti is void of meaning why the above will be untrue. But all utterings, whatever they are, are part of the social field. Social utterings.

I ask him if graffiti can be integrated.

You can be repressive or tolerant. Again, when graffiti comes onto a canvas you miss out on -the site specific. Every art form should be read within its forum, it's context. Graffiti isn't just scribbling on walls.

Claus reflects on how he would deal with the graffiti-problematic, would he have a say in it. He suspects that he would allow it to thrive by itself. Believing it would die of on its own. At least we would have less a problem that way. But: correcting himself, he realizes this solution is impossible. It goes against all of the logics of society.

He describes how the art-institution represents the minority-groups that don't allow themselves be influenced by parliament. Within the institution everything should be represented, even graffiti. Graffiti can't disappear. It can be integrated into the art-institution and become Fine Art or it can gain political legitimacy and turn into harmless Folk Art.

We talk about the exhibition Stockholm Underground that The City of Stockholm closed and the criminalization of graffiti on other fronts. Claus is certain nothing similar could happen in Denmark. Where symbolism and politics meet Sweden often has a problem. You simply have a hard time dealing with the non functional.

Tele applied to the art academy 2001 by pasting posters on all the walls a block around the school, and then sending the same posters in his application. He wasn't accepted. "Someone does that poster-thing every year." Is Claus's comment.