Graffiti

The other day we went out on a two hour walking tour to do an "exegesis of Place" with Professor Vaclav Cílek, one of the most respected professors in Prague. He studies geology and philosophy and connects them by studying the history of places and architecture.

One of the most interesting parts of the walk was the TV Tower which is one of the highest buildings in Prague and also one of the most hated. It was made by the communists to block out the European and American radio stations at it does not fit in with the rest of the beautiful city. As a way of covering up such a horrific building, the country hired the famous Czech sculptor, Cerny, to make the building more "humanic". His interpretation of this was to put enormous babies crawling all over the building with giant tv screens as faces. Don't ask me how this makes the building more inviting, I am extremely creeped out by the idea of huge robotic babies crawling around a tower but they made the sculptures and put them on the tower. To make it worse, the tower is actually built directly on top of a Jewish cemetery, many headstones can still be seen from one side and the old mortuary is now used as a pre-school. Just when I think Prague can't get any more strange, something like this pops up and amazes me. Cílek explained that the Czechs have a way of dealing with things through sarcasm and dark humor and the baby sculptures were really the only way they saw to change such a terrible and disrespectful building into a mockery and make their peace with it.

Cílek took us around a touristless part of Prague and we were quickly aware of all the graffiti around us. He explained the importance of the graffiti and how it has gone from a subculture to a mainstream part of the Czech culture. He even said that some neighborhoods appreciate the graffiti that is done well because it covers up the ugly old cement communist buildings.