Urban Takeover… with Stickers? - Katie Binns

‘It’s Not Yours!’

Waiting for a friend in a cafe in the seventh district today I saw this sticker. Someone has apparently `claimed´ it. Whether that´s the entire building or just the space covered by the sticker I am not sure. It’s part of a game called Urbantakeover and, as the name suggests, it’s all about taking over the city. All you have to do is sign up, print out some stickers and slap them on some space. Check out www.urbantakeover.at The website tracks your success, counts your points and lets you know if your stickered part of the landscape has already been taken.

Maybe I am just a lazybones but who – apart from students – has the time or the inclination to be bothered with such an activity? And what is the point? Do we really need to take over the city? And can you really conquer Vienna with a bunch of stickers and a biro? I don’t think so. What is the point?   Is it trying to be art? Because art it ain´t. For starters, it is not like some of the fantastic graffiti art around. These are stickers with scrawlings on them which essentially say ´I woz here`. Secondly, even if they were a bit more aesthetically pleasing I hate being forced to view such nonsensical crap that I wouldn´t choose to view in the first place. It´s like the music blaring out of some cretin´s earphones that’s inflicted on me early in the morning on the u-bahn. Keep it to yourself will you, I want to say but only ever sometimes do. Same with the building next to the cafe I am in. If you think it is yours then keep it to yourself. Please don´t add to my early morning music woes.

I am sure local authorities are not going to be ecstatic about this new ´craze` and, however unhip of me this sounds, I don´t like it either. I don’t want to see stickers all over Vienna. What do you think?