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Contrary to its name, so-called street art has been socially acceptable for a long time now. British graffiti star Banksy eternalized himself and his work in a movie, and the honorable Viennese Museumsquartier commissioned the guerilla tile-artist "Space Invader" to apply his trademark in its entryway. In Nikki Schuster´s stroll down a Parisian street "space invader" also makes an appearance: the distinctive outline of the spaceship suddenly floats in front of an old metal Venetian blind. But in this case it isn´t stuck onto a background, but instead, fluttering, changes its form, which is made up of old cheese wrappers.
Animation artist Nikki Schuster quotes street art when, in the first shot, she pans past a stencil, a patterned logo sprayed onto the sidewalk. But the colorful markings in public space are merely the stage for a ballet of overlooked things: little creatures made of trash carrying out their choreography; tottering, ringing, and rattling before the camera.
The trash monsters built from found objects are animated in front of the camera in single frame projection and subsequently put together on the computer. The sound, too, is found: a mixture of street noises, children´s shouts, a street musician´s tune in the background. The sounds from the little creatures, which jump in front of the camera like goblins, are generated for their part from the sounds of their own materials: an old magnet strip crackles, keys jangle, bottle tops rattle metallically, the sugar in the paper packaging rustles, and champagne corks grate in their aluminum wiring.
Upon closer inspection, picturesque Paris, where graffiti has also meanwhile seamlessly integrated into the street scene, turns out to be a biotope inhabited by extremely lively bastards of human consumerism. They live everywhere: in the cracks of walls, folds of posters, drainage pipes. And while a street musician reels off his chanson repertoire on the surface, they give their own dingy-raspy concert. (Maya McKechneay)
