Usti Nad Labem Billboard Project, Czech Republic, collaboration with Dirk Wright, 2011

Usti Nad Labem is a city we are completely unfamiliar with and likely lack the means of ever knowing thoroughly. Being presented with the opportunity to work for a city within these parameters, to then display the outcome in this most public way possible, is as amusing as it is complex.
 
During the first few days of very surface-level research into Usti Nad Labem, we found a 1999 article published by the BBC1, detailing a proposed wall between the Czech and Gypsy quarters of Metichny Street. Again, with no understanding of the city, how it operates and virtually zero insight into local custom, we set out to address the issue. Was the wall ever seen as a real shock to locals? Has it at this point become a cliché topic of critique within the city? Or is it perhaps a taboo subject? Whatever the reality, all possible options were equally inviting to reflect upon from a distance.  

We took into account the formal aspects of a billboard and how it operates physically as a channel for messaging, defining the role of the automobile as its primary viewing platform. While driving, pictures were taken out the window at random, flipping the perspective and documenting views opposite the billboard showing what it tends to see day-in day-out.

Easily victims to interpretation, there is a fine line between walls playing the role of either protector or aggressor. With this in mind, images of property lines and objects signifying these outer perimeters of domesticity were selected. Featuring mostly fences and hedges, the three resulting compositions hold a strong sense of placelessness; these pictures could really be from anywhere. It is this feeling we are most interested by; where previously unseen details become recognisable, and conversely, when the recognisable slides into obscurity.

We took Vancouver’s most recent and uncharacteristically bold mottos “You Gotta be Here”, “The Best place on Earth”, and “It doesn’t get more west-coast than this”2, again in reaction to the topic of cliché. We mixed the words in part due to legal issues around using the slogans directly, while also making light of the fact presumably most of Usti Nad Labem’s inhabitants speak a minimal amount of English. Again, further reflecting ideas of generalization and stereotype.

Upon the hopeful insertion of these images, we would like to discuss the possibility of professional documentation of the billboard in situ, to then display as large format photographs here in Vancouver to complete the non-existent dialogue between our two cities.






1) World: Europe
Hiding gypsies behind a wall
BBC News Friday, February 26, 1999 Published at 12:40 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/286704.stm

2) “You Gotta Be Here”
http://www.yougottabehere.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwSCHRQCIBY&feature=related
- a quote from local celebrity Sarah McLachlan

“The Best Place On Earth”
http://www.bestplaceonearth.ca/