Ghetto fabulous: the murals of Haas & Hahn

March 5th, 2013

David Schulberg the 3rd

Their most recent work in Philadelphia is even bigger, even jazzier. Philly
Painting is two blocks (50 shopfronts) of audacious abstract stripes. It
recalled, the Philadelphia Inquirer said, the grid paintings of the artist
Piet Mondrian, albeit moving to a ‘hip-hop beat’. Haas & Hahn like
this description partly because Mondrian is a compatriot, and because they
are hip-hop enthusiasts.

Painting patterns on houses when the entire neighbourhood is on the verge of
collapse might seem pointless. But they argue that it can be an impetus for
change. ‘Our projects bring hope, positivity, beauty, job opportunities and
stability,’ Urhahn says. ‘You know, we are actually offering quite a nice
package.’

I meet Urhahn in a café in Berlin. At 39 he is dressed in urban street gear –
hoodie, trainers, jeans, chunky jewellery – and tells me he has an enormous
tattoo of a dragon on his back. (He flew his tattooist from Amsterdam to
Vila Cruzeiro to help design the koi carp.) He comes over as a genial and
articulate man who likes to talk. He has no art training, and so he has
adopted the role of the talker who manages the projects. Koolhaas is the
artist and the introvert.

‘You will find him on the street painting, and you will find me on the street
talking to people about the design,’ Urhahn says. It is fitting then, that
Urhahn is here while Koolhaas is in Italy designing projections for a Prada
fashion show. The fashion house is a client of Oma (the Office for
Metropolitan Architecture), the firm founded by Jeroen’s uncle, the
celebrated architect Rem Koolhaas, for whom Jeroen is a freelance graphic
designer. (He is also an illustrator for the New Yorker magazine.)

^{Dre Urhahn and Jeroen Koolhaas in front of Philly Painting (JON KAUFMAN)}

Urhahn is in Berlin for the launch of Challenge the Obvious, a documentary
about the favela painting. Sponsored by Hub footwear, the Dutch-based shoe
company, the documentary is to be screened at this evening’s opening of a
new Hub store in the city. Haas & Hahn have also designed a shoe for Hub
inspired by the Philadelphia project: the Philly Painting shoe – a
limited-edition, hi-top trainer in dark maroon (the original colour of the
majority of the buildings in Germantown).

Haas & Hahn are clearly in demand. They speak at symposiums on the
rejuvenating effect of their art. They had an exhibition at Storefront for
Art and Architecture, in New York, and in 2011 Brazilian Vogue declared
Santa Marta one of the 10 most colourful places in the world. People ask for
their help.

‘You can imagine how many emails we get,’ Urhahn says. ‘Hey, why don’t you
come to Nigeria? Haiti?’ And yet the careers of Urhahn and Koolhaas are
puzzling to some. Critics acknowledge the visual impact of the designs but
question its ability to transform. After all, they say, Santa Marta and
Germantown are still poor.

‘It’s naive to think that painting over this depopulated blightscape can do
anything more than mask the avenue’s failure,’ the Philadelphia Inquirer
said of Philly Painting. ‘It’s a feel-good strategy being passed off as an
economic-development one.’

^{Philly Painting (JON KAUFMAN)}

‘You could write a very thick book about the problems in north Philadelphia,’
Urhahn agrees, listing closed factories, poor education, graffiti, broken
windows – this is an area buffeted by poverty and racism.

‘Obviously a painting project is not going to solve that,’ he continues.
‘Wages haven’t risen and the number of jobs hasn’t risen, but the attitude
has risen, ever so slightly. People take a bit more pride and care in their
street. It’s not just that it looks nicer, it’s also that they finally feel
some attention has been given to their neighbourhood.’

‘The inhabitants of Vila Cruzeiro feel valued by the artwork of Jeroen and Dre
in the favela,’ Nanko van Buuren, the creator and executive director of
Ibiss (Brazilian Institute of Innovations of Social Health), a non-profit
organisation that works in the favelas, says. Van Buuren met Koolhaas when
he was a young student on an exchange with Ibiss. Koolhaas and Urhahn are
eternally grateful to van Buuren as he introduced them to the drug lords and
their soldados in Vila Cruzeiro to ‘guarantee their safety’. And van Buuren,
in turn, is happy to rave about the artists he calls ‘two crazy Dutch men’
who gave the ‘inhabitants a kind of self-esteem’. He says the murals have
become something of a tourist attraction, and Ibiss is even setting up a
tourist agency, L-tours, which will be run by ex-soldados. ‘This will bring
some extra income.’

Haas & Hahn became a team almost by accident. Urhahn grew up in Amsterdam,
the son of an urban planner and an artist; Koolhaas in Rotterdam, the son of
a professor at the Delft University of Technology and an art historian.
Urhahn went on to study Chinese language and culture at Leiden University
but left after two years to work variously as a journalist, copy writer, art
director and founder of a television production company. Koolhaas studied
graphic design at the Design Academy Eindhoven and then worked as a
freelance audio-visual designer and illustrator. It was hip-hop that brought
them together.

^{Philly Painting (JON KAUFMAN)}

‘Dre was organising hip-hop parties and I started designing the fliers,’
Koolhaas tells me, when we speak on the telephone. The partnership was
cemented when Koolhaas was awarded €5,000 to make a documentary after
winning a prize for his graduation film, a short animation. Having spent
some time in São Paulo and Rio as part of a student exchange, Koolhaas
proposed making a film about hip-hop in the favelas. He recruited Urhahn as
an assistant. One day they were driving through Rio when they saw the
favelas – unmissable in the city as the shacks cling to the steep hills. ‘I
said, “Wow, imagine if you could paint that,’’’ Koolhaas remembers. ‘We
liked coming up with crazy things to do and this one just stuck.’

At that point it was about the bravura of youth. The activism came later. ‘At
first we just wanted to paint, but then our responsibilities changed,’
Koolhaas says. ‘Before you can work in a neighbourhood which has had 30
years of decline, downfall and broken promises there is more talking to be
done than painting,’ Urhahn explains. ‘The neighbourhood has to respect you,
and that is not something you can buy or force. You really have to earn that
by moving there, shopping there, partying there and having your birthday
there.’ He even proposed to his girlfriend, an artist, in a bar in
Germantown.

But there are downsides. Since 2006 they have been living a hand-to-mouth
existence. Dulux provided €100,000 for the favela paints, and they managed
to raise €25,000 themselves. But that barely covered accommodation and
living costs. They paid themselves a salary for Philly Painting, which cost
$500,000 (funded by a team of partners including $215,000 from the City of
Philadelphia Commerce Department). But after buying 50 different colours of
paint, and paying 12 full-time painters $12 an hour, life, Urhahn says, was
still ‘low budget’.

^{Philly Painting (JON KAUFMAN)}

Talking to Urhahn and Koolhaas provokes the question, ‘But for how long?’ How
long can they go on working so intensely? How long can they carry on moving
from country to country? They know they will have to change. ‘We have to be
more businesslike so we can manage financially,’ Koolhaas says. But for now
they have big ideas driving them on. They are thinking of setting up a paint
factory and they have been invited to the Caribbean to discuss a project.

‘The oil industry has closed down a factory,’ Urhahn says, ‘and a whole city
on this Caribbean island is out of work.’ And with that he smiles, shakes my
hand and is gone.

Source Article from http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568301/s/2935e6ca/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Cart0Cart0Efeatures0C98997490CGhetto0Efabulous0Ethe0Emurals0Eof0EHaas0Eand0EHahn0Bhtml/story01.htm