Memories of Meeting of the Styles

You have a cement wall 55 feet high. Which would you prefer?

This:
20071021_10-34-31

Or this:
20071229_13-14-03

The mural at the top was painted in September of 2007 as part of the Meeting of the Styles in Los Angeles. Meeting of the Styles is an international event put on by a West German collective. They touched down in the U.S. in 2007 and did a few events.

“[…]Mural-Art has a strong history, older than property, not only because of the political roots of the Meeting in the conflict of preservation and destruction of Europe´s legendary Wall-Street-Meeting, but also because we as the organisation feel responsibility to work for unification, in order to raise conscioussness and to resist a system that takes away freedom for order, control and profit. Politics affect us each and every day, locally and globally. Your consumption has a direct impact to the destruction and exploitation of environment and the manipulation and enslavement of humanity.”
– “Why do you have so much politics on your site?” in FAQ, Graffiti Events Worldwide

The second image is after a going-over by contractors for Los Angeles County. At the behest of Supervisor Gloria Molina, this massive installation was “buffed” (painted over) in late 2007. Since then, millions in grants from the federal government, and general funds from the County of Los Angeles, have been spent to obliterate Los Angeles’ street art heritage in the Los Angeles River.

You can see more images of the Meeting of the Styles in my Flickr account and in the Flickr account of user lavacado.

Call it what you want, but if I had a 55 foot tall cement wall, I know which image I’d prefer.

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