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Street art crosses City Hall

Experimental walk signs were meant to foster communication

By Lisa Nuch Venbrux
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
May 2nd, 2007 issue

Photos by Barbora Pivoňková
The 12 panáček designs by Roman Týc portray people in activities from the mundane — "they poop, pee, drink" — to the extreme of suicide.
“Street art is always on the borderline of the law,” says Roman Týc, a self-described street artist, video artist and scenographer.
His Web site photos ooze this renegade spirit. Grainy head shots show a stern Týc posed behind a long number, mimicking mug shots. The strip of black blotting out his eyes supports the illusion of him as a common criminal, and alludes to his previous wish for anonymity.
City Hall says Týc's installation of glass covers could have caused harm to pedestrians.
Perhaps he is a criminal. At least, his “experimental panáčeks,” which covered walk signs throughout Prague, had authorities seeing red.
Týc plastered panáčeks, a Czech word meaning “little people,” over the staid red-and-green “walk/don’t walk” figures at city street crossings. “The whole thing was a one-day thing so that nobody would notice me,” Týc confesses. He installed the figures in daylight Easter Sunday.
The 12 panáček designs, which resemble the conventional figures on walk signal lights, depict people in mostly everyday situations. “They behave like human beings. … They poop, pee, drink. … They symbolize us.” he says. Other figures’ actions are not-so-everyday. One hangs himself. Another, appearing crucified, slumps from an invisible cross.
Týc obtained 50 glass light covers, made from the same kind of glass used for walk signals, which differ from traffic lights for cars. He then designed the figures on a computer and printed them “like stickers” with a plotter, a kind of printer used by architects. The whole process took one week.
The next step involved replacing the glass amid curious spectators, whom he said seemed to appreciate his work. “Apart from my almost mother-in-law, no one reacted in a negative way,” he says.
Týc, who had the project in mind for three years, was interested in how people behave when their jobs finish each day. During those moments after work, people “do not behave as the boss likes it.”
The artist calls getting people to communicate with each other a main intention of his work. “Some of [the panáčeks] are in the mood to end it all, pack it all up, and sometimes people feel like that, so I thought that if they saw them it might change their minds.”
City Hall, on the other hand, did not have such an uplifting reaction when officials saw the figures featured on TV just two days after their installation. They removed them four days later. In an interview with Instinkt weekly, City Hall spokesman Jiří Wolf said the “unprofessional manipulation of streetlights” could have caused damage that might have harmed pedestrians. According to him, overall damage from the project could cost the city 100,000 Kč ($4,854).
After City Hall filed criminal charges against the then-unknown perpetrator, Týc revealed his identity. “I am willing to face it,” he says, though he seems to miss anonymity. “I liked being anonymous because when you do street art you like to give yourself to the people — it is not for sale. The art lives among people.”
Naďa Černá contributed to this report.

Lisa Nuch Venbrux can be reached at lvenbrux@praguepost.com


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