creepstreet
Last month I was in Innsbruck, Austria. The area I stayed in had this creepy feel to it. The houses were close to each other with narrow streets as the whole neighborhood seemed to be crawling up the cold mountain side. But it wasn’t so much the grey dirty house blocks or the steep narrow ice covered alleys. i got mostly creeped out by the street signage. This may sound weird but they were all still done in the original ‘Third Reich’ style font face. It’s amazing how a certain font face can bring up so many nasty associations. Why was it still there? Or should I ask: why not? Where the streetsigns already there before Nazi Germany was taking over the streets. Does it even matter who was first the font or the fascist that made it part of their style? Should you even try to hide and erase history? I don’t think they are to much busy with changing and erasing in Austria anyways as they seem more inclined with promoting their victim role in the whole thing. I don’t pretend to know too much of the true depths of the Austrian soul in these matters so i should really shut up. But I do still remember having breakfast at a homestay in some valley a few years ago under a portrait of an SS-officer.
Back to the street sign. If you would strip the font of this sign and out of its context and take it back to the 19th century or before it probably had a whole different meaning. But now it communicates stomping boots and “sieg heil!” to me. It’s kind of like the Swastika which has been used in history fro anything from an Indian sun symbol to bronze age scribbles. I like the geometrical shape of a Swastikas but I can’t really use it to communicate with because it got hijacked by Adolf. I have a hard time dealing with universal symbols that get hijacked tied up and forced to communicate a certain message. Recently I did some designs with rainbow colors and afterwards I received some comments (from certain homophobic people I will not mention by name) that it was gay. So like the swastika, the rainbow is also hijacked and off limits… Ah well at least a rain doesn’t creep me out as much.
· Dec 23, 09:32 PM by manonthemoon international
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