MOS Germany Day 3

“Time, nothing but time…” zorzorzor

If day two was about frenzied production and managing the flows of traffic, attention, and quick shifts of heat and cold, day three is a time of suspension, winding down, sometimes last minute finishes, but also elongated conclusions and bittersweet goodbyes. It is the simultaneous desire for and celebration of a space of ample time that occurs out of time’s closing doors.

“See you next time, around the world,” an Italian writer remarked to a Chicago writer on departing from the Schlathof, and indeed, in a sense, the MOS festival is a space where this is nothing but time by virtue of it being a limited span of shared production, dwelling, and talk. 

The sense of having nothing but time is generated by attention being riveted to a similar object: graffiti (and often hip hop) culture and its cultivation, commemoration, and elongation. 

Of course, this is reflected differently in different pieces. A bear fighting a wolf who is followed by a shark, with a frenzied b-boy figure and writer hanging out in the lower wall, as reflected in one of the main viaduct walls, does not necessarily tell a totally transparent story about what graffiti culture means from a collection of writers across the globe. 

Yet, in the process of production many stories are told about the development of a style, what led an artist to craft a clean representation of a shark tooth, or a vortex, and in those stories information about paths of travel, stylistic influences and subtle shifts that often occur in relation to growing friendship networks.

This years’ theme, “Cause and Effect,” is ample, and is represented in an apocalyptic scenario brought about by the death of a butterfly in one large scale production, an underwater scene related to the Bermuda triangle, in another, or gun violence in a third.

In many of the walls the wall is effect of a complex, transnational, graffiti network that results in variegated styles but the willingness and interest of a diverse range of individuals to work together, across borders, languages, and stylistic idioms. The wall including work by FPLO, The Aerosol Kings, Bird, Statik, and other artists is one such example. Loosely drawing on the theme of “apocalypse,” it showcases representations of dystopia, violence, corruption, and disillusionment, alongside burners of names that do not represent too much beyond themselves.

The festival, which included a snippet of the wealth of hip hop and graffiti culture across the globe, uses Wiesbaden as a dynamic space, aided by committed organizing, a coterie of invested writers, an interested municipality, sponsors, and, importantly, an engaged public, viewers who go up to the artists and tell them, “it is very beautiful,” or “nice,” or surprising, that enable writers far from home, to feel at home. 

The day ended with painting a wall behind the Schlachthof. The Schlachthof is a space that is part barren parking lot, part hippie nirvana, part ghostly memory of the holocaust, and a contemporary reminder of graffiti culture. 

An Italian dude cracks open  a can of paint and sprays it around a figure, creating a a water-color like effect. It is warm, quiet, and lit by the long summer sunset. Tizer (UK) says that the genre Manuel suggested for the wall is the gross, hideous and slimy. 

There are two-headed men, a vomiting slug, free form mouths and worms also vomiting. After the intense crowds at the bridgehead in Mainz-Kastel, the open wall offers something of a respite, but also a way to reconnect to a form of painting that is less performative, more personal, the quiet friendships and solidarity borne out of long hours at a wall. It suggests that such scenes of conviviality have the possibility of time, nothing but time.