“Delete” – An Art Project against Visual Bombarding
The weekend supplement of the Swiss newspaper “Der Bund” reported about a project of two Austrian artists who in summer 05 had covered all advertising signs, logos and company names of a commercial street in Vienna with fluorescent monochrome yellow foils. In this two week project called “Delete” (you find an English description by clicking into the upper left “deleted” area) they just left those written signals necessary for road safety. They just have published a book in German on this campaign.
On this project they say: “The aspect of deleting – The lettered, indented, grid-iron order of the street space is transformed into a ‘smooth’, orderless space, which unleashes something akin to pure potentiality …. a process of letting go occurs, or, to put is more positively in lines with the principles of Taoism – a vacuum is produced which maintains the fullness.” A deeply spiritual motive.
The project was meant as a protest against the flooding of the cities with ads, thus commercialising public space. This visual inundation is an expression of the modern over-active business-oriented way of life, and a campaign will probably just create a momentaneous awareness of the continuous bombarding. A more sustainable change has to come from the inner. Through a meditative work you are washing of the graffiti from the walls of your inner nature, as I hinted at in a post 2 weeks ago.
It is my experience that this continued exposure to silence deletes the sensual imprints and re-creates the pureness of the original state. From this the noise of irrelevant impressions gets neutralised and instead of getting sweeped away you stay in contact with your higher self.
