Possible Books
Since 2015, we have also been publishing texts on art in public space, also called graffiti by some, under the imprint Menetekel.
We see ourselves as book makers, not publishers. Our books are industrially produced when necessary, but always have a "human touch".
The original version of ENEMY KIDS was written in 1997 as a reaction to ODEM's "On the Run", the first german-language work of so-called "graffiti literature", which is, of course, above all an argumentative piece of coming-of-age prose. BUS 126 has two chapters dedicated to him in this book, in which he finds it difficult to find himself. Prompted by the text, which was noticeably formulated by a ghostwriter, he recounts his own view of the West Berlin graffiti scene, of his childhood and youth in Lichtenrade and Marienfeld. Were these beginnings of hip hop and graffiti in Berlin really so glorious and creative? Who were the young men whose lives included graffiti as naturally as violence, drugs and boredom? What was the mood like in the walled-in half of the city?
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Due Magneti by artist A. Herms is a collection of day and dream texts that become interwoven into a narrative about the construction of roles. The banal is sacred, the dreams are treasures. Both the reflection of everyday occurrences and the ability to transform oneself in dreams offer possibilities to question and shape one's own biographical identity.
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Tagging has rarely been the subject of serious examination. The Tag Conference is a first attempt to conceptually frame contemporary tagging, and to study it alongside its abundant but largely ignored historical antecedents. Informal name writing in public spaces is a time-honored practice, probably as old as writing itself. In the last century, it has acquired unprecedented intensity and has become the central feature of several full-fledged folk cultures throughout the globe.
The most sophisticated of these cultures is the graffiti tradition that developed in the subways of New York City during the 1970s. By influence of this tradition, name writing is today generally referred to with the slang term “tagging”.
The Tag Conference provided a space for discussion about tagging, about its nature, its meaning and its history, and about the diverse tagging traditions and cultures that exist and have existed.