The Man the Spray Cans Leave Behind

Somewhere in Berlin right now, while someone finishes shaking a can and steps back to admire what they made, Thilo Rediske is writing it down in a notebook. He works for the BVG—the city’s public transit authority—and his job is to document everything the crews put up so it can eventually be removed.

He sat down with ZDF to talk about his work and spoke with the measured calm of someone who has long accepted his situation. I’ve written down takes our company has to remove. Takes—graffiti takes. He sees the crews operating sometimes, watches them spray from close enough to observe the technique, but he doesn’t intervene. I don’t confront them, he says, because it can happen that they hold the spray can right in your face. Then, almost incidentally: Four weeks ago they stabbed one of ours.

What gets me is the symmetry of it. Both sides cataloguing, both sides escalating. He said it plainly: They’re upgrading the same way we are. He follows them around the city at night writing things in a notebook. They make more things to write down. Nobody’s winning.