Welcome to the second issue of Boulevard – On Trespassing and Culture.

They – mostly burned out rock stars – have claimed that the second album was the hardest to conceive. Looks like we finally managed. Although we’re mostly in the compilation business, we’ve tried hard to push the original content slice forward: for our TALK-section we have conducted a good amount of actual talk with selected heretics of unauthorized public art. For this reason we also revoked our self-scheduled release order and preponed INSTITUTION(alization), which fits these talks so well. FORM is not cancelled, but will be next.

The topic of institutionalization is an all-pervasive promise and threat, impossible to ignore and to not ignore at the same time. We should have started with philosophical definitions on what even defines and constitutes an institution in the first place. Skip that, there should be some hints to gather throughout this issue, and for the rest, well, we are still a specialized niche endeavour. So what means institutionalization in and to that very niche? Many things – one of which penetrates your perception right now. In most cases, talk about the topic unavoidably refers to the established institutions of society at large, like museums, academic bodies (to avoid the i-word again), but also the institution (in a different sense) of capitalist commodification.
All-overshadowing here remains of course the ever-present never-solved questions surrounding these particularly ‘Dangerous Liaisons: Graffiti in da Museum’1. This our issue aims to bring you texts and talks by and with some of the most distinguished or daring curators, critics, cultural mediators and chief theoreticians at the forefront(s) of the field, that are not so easy to come by.

Upscaling the proportion of original voices, we took good care to accompany the printed gallery that our CASES-section represents with some additional written testimonies from the featured artists themselves. It adds to the enjoyment of these extraordinary works to read a few thoughts by the individuals behind the work or a source close to them.
These days we’ve hung at home a little more than usual, which could seem beneficial to editors and writers like us, but somehow it’s not been exactly and unequivocally that. However, there are activities which get much more affected, so no complaints here.
We have to express our gratitude to everyone who, in one way or another, has enabled us to put this issue together. There are, first and foremost, the original authors, artists and interview partners who contributed with texts, talks or artwork, or gave permission to use their historic contributions. Moreover we thank those wo/men-in-the-middle, who helped with information on interesting content or generously let us use their intellectual property. Artist Eginhartz Kanter, for example, pointed us at the existence of Patrick Hagopian’s ‘Reading the Indecipherable’, film maker Matt McCormick let us use a number of stills from his legendary ‘The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal’. Greek artist Ino provided some photo material, despite his awareness of the scrutinizing nature of Orestis Pangalos’ article which to illustrate we had it asked for. If the (openly communicated) tendency was not lost on him (or his manager), this gesture certainly makes for a good example of openness to debate. One of the very things we stand (and fall) for

As announced there, we have conducted interesting intellectual and artistic interactions under the banner of ‘Transgression-Workshop’ at ‘KR19 Urban Art Festival’ in September 2019 at Campus Attisholz, the very institution who generously funded (and thereby initiated) our first issue. At KR19, we recommended and introduced a number of artists, and met an equal deal of new ones.
The exchange encompassed Steffen Mischke, Dunja Janković, Boris Hoppek, Troy ‘Other’ Lovegates, Aris, Gaspard Louane, Gigo Propaganda, Werne Feller and Corso Bertozzi, just to name a few. Extremely entertaining and profound conversations went down, when these artists and experts met and exchanged with the whole team of Boulevard in the improvised kitchen. We are happy to have had our hand in bringing them together and equally grateful for having been introduced to those we didn’t know yet. With Dunja Janković and Emanuel Roth, we stumbled over not only one but two artists there who had something fitting at hand for this issue. Together with film-maker Stefan Pohl (stefanpohlfilm.de), director of ‘Hello my name is – German Graffiti’, we accompanied Gigo Propaganda at KR19 for a challenging conversation about next-level forms of layering, to be uploaded on our website some day. […]