Achtung
2015-16 I Zürich
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Achtung (Caution) was a series of black-and-white murals in the building of my art school, ZHdK Zürich.
While studying fine arts, I really hated everything around me. I hated the city with its robot-like money-machine high-speed inhabitants. I hated my surroundings, where there were neither plants nor trees, just quadratic grey spaces to increase effectivity. I hated the so-called artists, who trembled for their career, and under the cover of institutional criticism were afraid of making any strong statements. I also hated myself for being there. So I drank and I smoked and I tried to figure out what was there to like about this city. I researched, and found myself quickly in the 80s and 90s. The time when the youth of Zürich was brave and strong enough not to give their city to the ever-growing capital of investments and dirty businesses. I pasted huge figures from those times onto the walls of my school. Figures, to remind people of things they forgot: to look into other humans' eyes, to fight for communal goals, or to be more concerned about what they do, and not about how they look.
Although the institute’s security guards had almost more power than anybody else, and my works counted as illegal street art, some of them lasted a couple of years. A four-meter-long guy smoking and drinking beer on the floor, was one of the last survivors. When I graduated, he was removed. With it, the last illusion of free art was gone from the public spaces of ZHdK. Fortunately, I left behind both this knowledge factory and the art scene.
The original photos I used for my work were taken by Miklós Klaus-Rózsa.
ZHdK I photo: Balint Liptay, Michael Felix
