Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.01.2006, Blaðsíða 5
EDITORIALS
Bart Cameron, Editor
On January 7th, a number of musicians of great
stature dedicated their time and reputations to
saving Iceland’s highlands and stopping the con-
struction of the Kárahnjúkar aam – or at the very
least further dams like it. It looks to be an histori-
cal occasion. Even if the dam is built, at least now
there has finally been large-scale vocal opposition.
As one local reader, a young doctor returning from
studies abroad, told me it is now impossible to
openly admit that you have ever been in favour of
the dam.
While I gladly dedicate this magazine to Hæt-
ta and other protest organisations, which may now
enter the mainstream – including Saving Iceland.
com, an organisation with whom the Grapevine
has had a great deal of difficulty in the past—I
ask the reader to take note of the non-January 7th
articles in this paper. If profound social injustice
in need of large-scale reaction is your thing, take a
look at the treatment the Reykjavík City Council,
and mayoral hopeful Dagur Eggertsson, gave the
Muslim and Eastern Orthodox communities here
in Reykjavík. Bad enough that these key members
of the Reykjavík community have been denied the
right to build a place of worship, but even worse
than the fact that they are being denied the right
to build a place of worship is the almost boastful
ignorance of Mr. Eggertsson, proudly proclaiming
that paperwork was held up for a year in city hall
because he didn’t know, and wouldn’t bother to
ask, if Eastern Orthodox Christians can worship
in the vicinity of a crematorium.
I also ask you to browse, as always, our cultural
reviews. Personally, as significant as January 7th
was, a key pull for the Icelandic music scene is the
idea of bands playing solely to entertain and help
people get through long nights, bad weather, and
awkward growth spurts—something Hjálmar,
Mínus and Bang Gang did recently at a free show.
Barði Jóhannsson of Bang Gang had a
particularly uncomfortable night on January 6,
and he told me he was horrified to play in front
of children who looked like their brains had been
turned off and were set in front of a TV. This is
what made his show so remarkable. The honest
truth is that the crowd who attended the free show
on January 6th did have their brains turned off
– mainly by a society that isn’t too interested in
the effect of its culture on its own youth. Maybe
this is a former English teacher speaking, but see-
ing a thousand teenagers slowly come to life and
react to art seemed like a remarkable accomplish-
ment. If a bit more of a connection could be made,
if Icelanders below legal drinking age could be
awakened enough to take part in a local dialogue,
we wouldn’t have to worry about a population
of voters passively accepting the decisions of a
government that doesn’t act in their interest.
Deep inside the city’s bureaucracy, a man is
concocting a plan. He has been given the task of
eradicating graffiti on the walls of Reykjavík. I
have spoken to this man, who requested to remain
anonymous for fear of retaliation on behalf of the
city’s street artists. During our conversation, he
told me about his plans for the “war on graffiti.”
He used these exact words – repeatedly, which
to me sounded an awful lot like the ever-popular
“war on drugs” or the “war on terror” for that
matter. Spawning images in my mind of heavily-
(paint)-armed and mobile units of city workers,
conducting seek and destroy cleansing missions
and sweep-up operations, while the insurgents,
the guerrilla like street artists scurry along in the
shadows, hiding among the pedestrians, armed
to the teeth with their spray cans and cardboard
stencils, waiting for the opportunity to stick one
to the man where it hurts the most. On the white
walls of his city.
His plans are based on a zero tolerance ap-
proach. No graffiti is to be tolerated. All walls
should be kept clean. Thus creating a city where
you will actually be shocked to see graffiti on a
wall instead of utterly indifferent. He aims to kill
– this type of culture. He has several ideas on how
to realise his vision of a squeaky clean city. At
one point in our discussion he broached a ban on
selling spray cans to people under the age of 20,
and fines for property owners who don’t clean or
paint over graffiti on their buildings. At the time,
this sounded like a bad joke. Until I found out that
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has just
passed a law that goes to the same measures. At
that point, it stopped being a bad joke and became
more of a frightening scenario. The key element
in his plan is the 24-48 hour clean-up. That is,
certain areas will be held under close surveillance
so that whenever graffiti emerges on a wall, it will
be removed or painted over with in the next 24-48
hours, depending on location. His belief is that if
the street artists are faced with an all-out attack,
they will eventually give up. Now, that logic has
proven infallible in recent warfare, hasn’t it?
Let’s get down to the nuts and bolts – the fiscal
matters. What are we talking about, bottom line?
How much green is his plan likely going to cost?
From the horse’s mouth, no less. I guess during
times of war, there is always the penchant to spend
big. This plan is thought of in terms of years, more
precisely, three to five years, after which graffiti
should be an almost non-existent occurrence and
easily containable on those rare occasions. We
are talking about gradual increases in spending,
starting with a modest budget, redoubled annually.
Bottom line? 500 million ISK given that this plan
drags out for the full five-year period. Annual
average of 100 million ISK. And you just know
how wars tend to drag on.
Folks, that is a half a billion ISK. Can we put
that number in any sort of perspective? My son
attends the newly built day care centre Hlíðaborg
(2003). The building project cost the city of
Reykjavík a whopping total of 33 million. We
are talking the costs of building 10-15 new day
care centres. We are talking about money that we
could spend on improving public transportation;
we are talking about money that could be spent
on improving the quality of life for the citizens of
Reykjavík, young and old. We are talking about
money that is going to be spent on paint, over and
over again. Does this make any sense?
Let’s look at the motives. Why would we want
to eradicate graffiti? One of the more common
rationalizations is that it is filthy. The city would
look so much cleaner and more beautiful if we
could get all the damn walls clean. That is one
opinion. An opinion that not everyone shares.
Another way is to look at graffiti as expression.
Graffiti is art. An open art form in which every-
body can engage. An exhibition becomes un-
tangled from the constraints of an art gallery and
the street becomes the rudimentary showroom. An
art form free of the hypocritical admiration for the
artist, as the artist remains unknown to most. Art
for the sake of art. I can’t remember the last time
I visited a gallery. But I appreciate art every time I
walk down Laugavegur. I marvel at the handwork,
the hidden messages, the poetry of the street. Of
course, not all graffiti is good street art, some of it
is really naïve, simplistic and unoriginal, but the
same goes for every other art form known to man.
Who am I to decide who is an artist and who is
not? I guess nobody explained this better than the
British street artist Banksy: “Imagine a city where
graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could
draw wherever they liked. Where every street was
awash with a million colours and little phrases.
Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A
city that felt like a living, breathing thing which
belonged to everybody, not just estate agents and
barons of big business. Imagine a city like that
and stop leaning against the wall – it’s wet.” I
guess what I am trying to say is, how does your
preference for a city void of graffiti outweigh my
preference for a city filled with street art?
Another frequent objection is that street art is
mere vandalism, damage done to private property.
The street, however, is not private property. The
street belongs to you and me. It is a public place,
and should be left to the public to decorate as the
public sees fit. Why should I not get to influence
what my street, what my city, looks like? Leave the
commons to the common. I will debate this issue
with you; I will even admit to a certain under-
standing to your viewpoint. But not to the tune of
half a billion ISK of the city’s funds. Hell no.
When I sat there, listening to a man running a war
on graffiti, I was reminded of the movie Foot-
loose. Some of you may remember: Kevin Bacon
stars as a young man who moves to a small town
where the officials believe that dancing will lead to
the demise and the disintegration of society. Shake
a leg and watch the whole fabric of society come
loose at the seams. It is the exact same judgmental
viewpoint where a whole aspect of our cultural
landscape falls victim to the narrow-mindedness
of people who believe they are better equipped to
make decisions for the rest of us. It sounds Tipper
Gore-ish.
This whole mentality is wrong on so many
levels that my cognitive skills simply fail to com-
prehend it. In the end, I get the feeling that this
will end like one of those campaigns against drugs.
Such as the “Drug-free Iceland in 2002” cam-
paign, which started during the 1990s and became
a complete and utter failure at the stroke of mid-
night on December 31, 2001. If you really want to
do something about graffiti, take 500 million and
spend it on arts education in schools. That way, at
least we will see an improvement in the street art.
Graffiti – A Half a Billion ISK Industry
Wake-Up Call
Sveinn Birkir Björnsson,
Editorial Intern
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