The task
Our first-semester brief was a screen print on the theme of pleasure and displeasure. Our group chose gentrification, a slow process we could see happening around us in Cologne-Ehrenfeld: rising rents, renovated facades, neighbours and small shops disappearing. The idea of printing on concrete came from my first concept. I led the group and carried out much of the work myself to realise that vision.
Idea & approach
Concrete stands for the new walls that go up, and for the old ones taken from the people who lived behind them. On it, we printed a collage of Ehrenfeld in a mural style. Disposable film cameras captured the neglected side of the neighbourhood, a digital camera the polished side: new playgrounds, street art, renovated facades. At the centre is a building wall caught in a lighthouse beam, with the "positive" side painted into the light. Neon pink and yellow read like graffiti, almost like a warning against the grey.
Process
We built two A2 moulds from chipboard, reinforced the slabs with mesh and cast eight of them over several weeks, keeping them wet so they wouldn't crack. While they cured, we shot Ehrenfeld, waited three weeks for the films and spent hours cutting and recombining prints into a collage, which we prepared as a bitmap in Illustrator. Concrete soaks up ink, so every colour was printed twice.
Result & learning
Eight heavy slabs that feel like pieces of a wall, and the weight is part of the message. It was our first screen print and our first time working with concrete, so the process was experimental rather than planned. I learned how much a material can say on its own, and how to keep a shared vision alive in a group of five when everyone pictures the details differently.
