Following on the events at ARTUR, some pieces already start to take shape in the city of Lagos and a sad story that happened with Alexandros Vasmoulakis on the spot. Pics and the story inside.
ARTUR making of
The permit story
You can read the original story here, this is the short version of that story.
So ARTUR had the permission from the owner of this building in which Alexandros Vasmoulakis was making an intervention. The owner shows up mad about what Alexandros was leaving on the building (old stuff mainly falling from windows) and said “what the fuck are you doing. This ain’t art, it’s fucking garbage and even I would do better, and tears the permission (from himself, the owner of the building) and told the artist to get the hell out and threatened him. The police then comes by and looks at it the same way the owner saw, but after a copy of the permission from the owner arrives (since original was now into pieces), the city council approval signature and the information about the ARTUR project all in the police hands, there was little they would do.
So, the police tries to reason with the owner explaining that since the building was long forgotten and in ruins, this art intervention would somehow help to bring awareness to the problems some spaces were having to stay under decent conditions, and therefor, would probably look much better than before.
The owner however, pissed with the situation and now with a mob of local people behind him, were able to evict the artist and LAC associates from the spot. Lagos has lost an intervention from a renowned artist, due to narrow minded people. Sad indeed.
