German street artist LAPIZ doesn’t mince words. He didn’t leave a long career in science for the nagging uncertainty of an artist’s life to lurk around important insights — he wants to drive right at the source. While the world was plunged into lockdown this year, LAPIZ remained active around his native Hamburg, shedding some light (in high-saturation hues, of course) on his own incisive opinions about how the coronavirus pandemic has elucidated ever-present flaws in our societal value systems.
This month, the dogged stencil specialist announced his latest work, titled Know your place citizen – consume! A wheatpaste campaign scattered throughout Hamburg’s hip and happening Sankt Pauli district on a medium-sized scale, Know your place satirizes the widespread hypocrisy present amongst this unorthodox holiday season.
“Even though Germany has not had quite a harsh lockdown compared to many other places in the world, it has become an indicator for what is deemed essential,” LAPIZ writes in a statement for the piece. “With this year coming to an end it becomes more obvious each day: What really matters to society, what really counts and what defines the system, is the ever growing economy.” Know your place pictures an ornery looking individual in edgy European garb — skinny jeans and a trim t-shirt, both rendered in electric lilac. He peers with apparent suspicion and resent at the viewer from under a Santa hat, comically cheerful compared to the figure’s facial expression.
The figure’s stance says bar fight, but his right arm extends forward in the friendliest gesture, handing a bill to the viewer and breaking the fourth wall. “We shall reduce our social contacts so we can consume,” LAPIZ continues. “Restaurants and bars need to close, socialising and eating is not important anymore, neither is culture, even worse it is punishable. Museums, theatres and concert halls are closed while galleries remain open for business.” The figure wears a sign in German around his neck that will prove comprehensible and resonant with viewers of any linguistic persuasion. No music, no public institutions, no nature, no shared meals. These days, it can feel like the only activities left on the table are surfing Amazon and willfully draining ailing bank accounts for a shot at some sense of spiritual sustenance.
At one long lost point in time, this season was allegedly one of connection, of transcending the base human desire to consume. Ephemeral pleasures like a loved one’s embrace or the odd joke from a typically quiet friend at the dinner table feel fleeting. Where they’re available, the innate risk attached looms palpable, creating an inescapable psychic drag that permeates each day on the subconscious level. Rather than offering any real emotional reprieve, governments’ aptitudes lies predominantly in setting more restrictions, a choice perhaps borne of responsibility (one would hope) but simultaneously bereft of the feeling we crave so deeply at this time.
“Can anyone remember how it was to party and escape everyday life in a club or a festival?” LAPIZ asks in conclusion “All of this does not matter anymore but we’ll get something in return: Christmas….well Christmas shopping to be precise, starting with Black Friday and Cyber Monday.” Though LAPIZ since noted in a separate email that Christmas shopping ceased when Germany re-instituted its total lockdown, the point still stands: “All hail the GDP, who needs to be happy anyways!”
Know your place takes shots at the state of things not for the sake of pure contention, but to remind unwitting viewers to examine their values in light of all that’s transpired, in spite of the meaning we take for granted at this time of year. “While his work is socially critical,” the artist’s own mission statement explains, “he believes that jarring realizations rendered beautifully benefit society. Anger, sadness, or disbelief are the natural inputs that precede action, organization, acts of hope — they are the byproducts of critical thought.” The bright colors of this piece speak to its true purpose. Vibrant purple, red, yellow, green, all join together in one carol, one ode to the code switch from consumerism to connection.
