Inhaltspezifische Aktionen

Kevin Grünstein

Kevin Grünstein

PhD student



Kevin Grünstein

Project Title:

Sticker. Kulturgeschichte eines ephemeren Zeichens

 

Abstract:

Sticker wars are being fought throughout urban areas. Freshly pasted, faded and weathered, torn off and painted over many times, palm-sized stickers stick on public toilets, at traffic lights, in pubs, alternative shared flats, streets, trendy neighborhoods. A history of cultural practices, of genealogies of wild posters, pamphlet literature, montage and collage experiments of the avant-garde etc., is embedded in these contemporary sticker wars. It is part of the reason how and why for actors nowadays stickers seem to be a low-threshold engagement to „reclaim the city“. On the basis of the number and density of the types of sticker statements and, above all, their asthetic "contestedness" in the course of the street, the cityscape‘s economic, sub- and socio-cultural social space and its segregation can be read. Moreover, by analyzing how actors contextualize their stickers, how they combine their political, advertising or artistic statements with common surroundings (to re-contextualize it), we get to know how everyday life „aesthetics“ are shaped, how people‘s „ways of seeing“ are irritated and reshaped. Seen this way, stickers are more than a specific historical and contemporary cultural artefact, but a microscopic archeological example for the possibilities and limits of political aesthetics itself.

Schlagwörter
Doktoranden