Oskars Redberg’s text “Friendly Riga” was inspired by conversation with Krzysztof Nawratek we had in 2013 in Frankfurt am Main.

Image by Oskars Redbergs

This image is inspiring and somehow unusual, because it shows phenomena of ‘rewriting urban narratives’ or let’s say ‘editing urban narratives’ written by another graffiti artists in outskirts of Pārdaugava, Riga.

It is unusual image, because actually this action was taking place in several places at the same time.

It shows graffiti artists ‘rewriting’ or ‘editing’ previous urban text written by some other artist, not by using traditional technique of ‘overtaking’ or ‘erasure’ of the previous message, but rather using ‘editorial tools or tactics ‘ to complement to the previous in order to generate continuous ‘urban subtext ‘ .

This artistic strategy gives a chance to see the ‘correction’ at the same time with the original text, therefore manifesting the idea of the city as an open source urban text where different and sometimes competing narratives coexist and are open for new interpretations and updates.