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“Wir sind das Volk!” and Dildos from the “Confusionist”
Continuing his human sticker campaign, street artist Rallitox has gathered a nice crowd in front of this portion of the Berlin Wall, otherwise known popularly as the East Side Gallery, many of whom are happily snapping photos as he sticks a couple of friends to it. The installation is a bag of mixed messages, perhaps the biggest is “look at me”, but we’ll help you unpack a couple of others here while we all stare at the spectacle of duct tape and dildos.
RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)
Wir sind das Volk! (We are the people!) is a phrase associated with a populist movement of reunification that erupted during the fall of the Berlin Wall that separated West from East twenty five years ago, but strangely, according to Rallitox, has been recently commandeered by xenophobes who want to get rid of certain immigrants. “Now the movement called Pegida, who are against the “Islamification” of Germany, are using this slogan for their own profit,” he says, and he is unhappy with this perversion of the original meaning in a campaign that is swaying opinions.
RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)
“Since I was a child I was fascinated with how advertising was conditioning our behaviors, the way we act and how are we supposed to be. I guess that at the end, everything is created in our brains. If you can control people’s minds you can dominate them. If you want to manipulate people you have to control in the best way the languages and symbols that affect us as humans,” he explains.
He admits that this new message of his may not be entirely clear. “This is my psycho-confused response to all those who are trying to claim that there are people who deserve to be ‘the people’ and others who are not good enough to be part of it, depending on what they believe.” That seems pretty clear from here – Rallitox wants to seize the slogan and reclaim it in some way.
RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)
Now, about the fleshy pink appendages pointed rather parallel to the pavement and attached to this installation: that meaning is slightly less obvious, even while being completely obvious.
“For me the penis is an icon that reflect perfectly the human state of mind,” he explains. “The hypocrisy toward part of the human body that is considered ugly and tasteless even when more or less half of humanity have one between their legs is interesting. On the other hand, drawing and working with penises gives me a lot of trouble in terms of selling my art and it closes doors in some mainstream street art circles where this ¨bad taste¨ is normally not so well received, with the exception of some more open minded blogs or magazines.”
Dang! That compliment was obvious too. Sure glad we are open minded, and since you, dear reader, are reading this, you clearly must be as well
RallitoX. East Side Gallery AKA Berlin Wall. Berlin. May 2015. (photo © courtesy of RallitoX)
Yes under a patriarchal construct you may associate these duct-taped dildos as symbols of power and dominion, or as possible weapons and open provocation, or the implication of a virile conceptual idea. Or we may see these as a criticism of boner headed thinking. Mainly we just keep in mind that dick jokes are often funny and when placed on the street at roughly eye-level, present a great number of entertaining photo opportunities.
“Some viewers don’t understand what the relationship between penises and politics is,” Rallitox says as he sounds like he is about to explain. “I aim to be a confusionist and to use Street Art to spread confusion, awareness, and chaos in some organized way.”
You may agree that the confusion aspect of the work is quite successful here.
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