A pungent smell hangs in the air, the wind tickles your skin. You can hear the rushing of the Isar, the crunching of stones under your feet, the hissing of spray bottles and the music from the DJ desk. But the most important thing is what you can see here under the Brudermühl Bridge: the brightly painted concrete pillars. Children and young people are spraying and painting one of them, two graffiti artists another – all completely legal, because it’s ISART workshop day.
The Färberei, an institution of the district youth council, organizes the ISART, a graffiti project that has existed since 1996. Every year the bridge pillars are repainted by graffiti artists. On Saturday, interested parties aged eight and over had the opportunity to take part. One side of the workshop pillar is repeatedly painted over – here the participants can try things out and develop a feeling for the cans, rollers and brushes. On the other hand, those paint their subject who want it to be admired for a whole year. According to the organizers, the rush to the workshop was so great that about half of all those who had registered had to be cancelled.
The sound of the ball in the can reveals the quality of the paint
A 14-year-old participant said her mother found out about the project on the Internet. She’s spraying for the first time today – but she’s having so much fun that she wants to come back next year. She is currently attempting to play the character Totoro from her favorite Japanese anime film of the same name. She says she’s been working on the picture for three or four hours. She had to paint over the first attempt, “because the color ran”. The reason: the wrong attachments on the spray cans.
“Depending on the pressure and the type of essay, the width of the line will vary,” explains Adrian Till of Outercircle, an association for the promotion of public art, which is involved in the project for the first time this year. You can also tell if the paint is mixed well by the sound the ball makes in the can when you shake it.
“It’s especially nice when the spraying becomes a kind of dance,” says Till. He also doesn’t really differentiate between graffiti and other art forms. “There are certain approaches to art. You either find one for yourself or you don’t.” He wouldn’t necessarily distinguish between large projects like this one on the Brudermühlbrücke and small spray shops that can be found at subway stations, for example. “Art is good when people implement what they want.”
Graffiti has long been a recognized art form. Some works on the pillars of the Brudermühlbrücke remain in place for a whole year.
(Photo: Leonhard Simon)
Two of this year’s pictures are already finished: One seems to be abstract to surrealistic. Nine names are emblazoned on the other, next to hands with flowers twined around them. Below the date 07/22/2016. In cooperation with the initiative Munich remember!, the pillar was dedicated to the victims of the attack on the Olympia shopping center. In the media, the attack was not explicitly described as right-wing terrorist, says curator Laura Simon. Therefore, they want to use their own platform to draw attention to it and to commemorate the victims.
QR codes are to be attached to the finished walls, which will give information about the respective work, the artists and the title. Spraying will continue here until the end of October. The pictures that are just being created can be admired in the open-air gallery until they are painted over again with other motifs in the summer of next year – an endless cycle.