Plotbot in Vogelsang
Radioactive street art
Normally I go alone. Alone or with my son, the only person I trust not to call the cops. He looks out for them all the time, warns me every time he sees a lurking Polizeifahrzeuge. They lurk everywhere. You’d think they’d have better things to do with all the murders and FIFA.
Last week I didn’t go alone, nor with my son. I brought Plotbot Ken and a companion out to Vogelsang. I had to go back, I went back.
We went to see some of the former’s work for a book on street artists the latter is compiling. I brought them in a Trabi for sentimental and practical reasons – it was the only car we had between the three of us. There’s always the fear you won’t make it at all, or back. Always the fear, the Trabifear.
But we made it, and back, or you wouldn’t be reading these words here but other words in a newspaper concerning the tragic deaths of a famous street artist and two unknowns in a Soviet military camp once capable of unleashing nuclear hell, atomic apocalypse. Thankfully that didn’t happen either or you wouldn’t be reading these words… well, anywhere.
Such paranoia is evidently shared by Plotbot, as anyone can tell from his artworks. They seep dangerous levels of radioactivity.
He was pestered by radioactive ticks the whole time we were in Vogelsang – only him. I’ve no idea why they’re attracted to him, perhaps they share the same angst, but he’s welcome to them as long as the little disease-carrying blood-suckers stay away from me.
I’d stumbled across Plotbot’s work before – we’re both drawn to neglected places after all – and find it always embellishes its new environment. He ensures his creations fit in, using native colors and complementing the art pieces with elements from their new surroundings. They’re a compliment in turn to the Topbot Plotbot.
I wrote about the lost city of Vogelsang before, of its nuclear past and fiendish intentions, in a previous post that also tells you how to get there, and again in another post on the terror of bunker diving.
Filed 4/6/2015 |
