Tag--we're it! Physical Graffiti at the Contemporary

On Bankhead Highway NW, a street buttressed by the Back Wall of the Atlanta Film Festival Offices in the Contemporary, at 535 Means Street, NW, Atlanta, the walls have been tagged with graffiti.

(To see "before shots", click in the Google Maps link and click "Street View".

Here's how the white wall looks now:













































Is this an act of vandalism? Or a subversive art show?

In the wake of the Graffiti brouhaha in Cabbagetown:

"Bowman "got involved" after some neighbors decided, unbeknownst to some others, to clean up the graffiti gracing a long brick wall at the north end of the neighborhood. The wall flanks the opening to the graffiti-saturated Krog Street tunnel, a dank expanse that's widely known as a "free space" for taggers to express themselves.

The same free-for-all attitude, however, does not translate to the wall, where tagging has been alternately tolerated and excoriated. Tensions over the wall peaked when graffiti-styled tags – and straight-up vandalism – began cropping up on Cabbagetown's sidewalks, trash cans and a local church.

As a result, a few exasperated members of the neighborhood association, who call themselves the Wallkeepers Initiative, decided to paint over the wall with the blessing of its owner, CSX railroad. In the process, they covered a mural by renowned Atlanta graffiti artist Totem – a mural that originally had been commissioned by the neighborhood, and later defaced by a tagger who sprayed it with the word "overproduced.

Not all neighbors supported the Wallkeepers' decision."