A warm Sunday afternoon in Linz, and with an hour between screenings I wandered around some quiet streets not far from City-Kino. Near a petrol station I spotted graffiti art on a wall, signed - sorry, tagged - by someone calling themselves KOT. I've seen several examples of his/her daubings around the city, and he/she is clearly the bearer of considerable talent. A quick search on Google ("LINZ GRAFFITI KOT") yielded the following example:
http://flickr.com/photos/sooperkuh/358241808/
which isn't one of his/her best (KOT might even be the name of a collective, come to think of it), but gives a general impression of what he/she/they/it is/are up to. Sorry, too many slashes in that sentence.
Anyway, what I am wondering is to what part this KOT is going to play in the whole '2009 Capital of Culture' thingy which is inescapable in Linz at the moment. Perhaps the organisers are going to focus on "high" culture - classical music, ballet, opera, well-made plays, literature, cinema, etc - and overlook or somehow marginalise what we might call "street" culture.
I hope this isn't the case: though to most British people Austria has something of a stuffy image, on my four visits to the country (thrice to Linz, once to Vienna), what I´ve been impressed by is the energy, creativity and "attitude" of its young people. There´s a lot going on in Linz in terms of what some might call "alternative" culture: punk, hardcore, radical, cutting-edge, label it what you will. And I really hope that the Capital of Culture organisers will try to put as much of that as possible at the heart of their project: many small grants to many small groups, rather than huge wodges of cash devoted to "grands projets".
And for anyone dubious that KOT isn't worthy of acclaim and attention might like to know that in my home country of Britain the artist who's attracting the most serious interest at the moment isn't Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst or Howard Hodgkin, but a man/woman/collective who tags his graffiti with the legend BANKSY.
And as this year's Crossing Europe has so triumphantly demonstrated, the most interesting culture, the most interesting and important art, is so very often that which is the most unbridled, unconfined, unrestrained, unpolite, unpretty... In a word: UNERZOGENEN!!!!!