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This mural was commissioned by neighbors who wished for their street, Calle Escudallers Blancs murals inspiring change towards a more social use of the ir city. Most of the themes included the problem of real estate speculation. The characters are handing out symbolic sweets to potential customers, making ridiculous promises and fooling citizens into selling their home at a very low price.
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"Vendiendo el barrio" 2004, Barcelona -C.Escudallers Blancs
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The titles : "Vigilando la cultura" = "Surveying Culture" and "Este no es Arte" = "This is not Art" refer to the zeal of the new Police in Barcelona in charge of the "graffiti problem".
Police officers became the effective judges of cultural crimes on public spaces, deciding who goes to jail, who gets a beating and who is left alone.
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The concept of Public Spaces here becomes absurd, not only because local authority's automatic rejection of any non-corporate form of expression, denying freedom of speech to citizens at times when the war in Iraq was going full blast, but also because Public Space was now clearly for sale and used exclusively for advertising and political campaigns. |
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All images © The Laboratory of Living Arts / Laurie Legrand, 2008. All rights reserved.
