On the morning of August 18, the inhabitants of Wuppertal awoke to art installations, billboards and wall paintings, which seemed to have appeared overnight. Many also found a flyer entitled Outsides, which appeared to be a note claiming responsibility. The flyer, which did not reveal the identity of its author but was signed with “xxx”, informed them that a group of artists had distributed a total of 22 art works all over the city. Soon you could see curious people walking up and down the streets guided by the vague location information given on the flyer. While doing so they could hardly ever be sure beyond doubt if a piece of graffiti, a painted lamppost or an object resembling a horse belonged to the Outsides project or not: thus, searching for and sensitised to art, they couldn’t help simply suspecting everything they saw to be part of a large project. They saw things and details which had never caught their eyes before, and the streets and squares they had walked on so many times suddenly appeared in a new light.
However, some things could be easily recognized as parts of the project, as was the case with a couple of large photographs which had been hung on the fronts of buildings facing the elevated railway line: the photographs, which showed people travelling on the elevated railway, drew considerable controversy because some of the people shown recognized themselves (who would rather not have been recognised). Other things gave the impression of being a gag: a metal sculpture had been placed on a plinth, which had otherwise stood empty in the square for decades. The sculpture was clearly conceived as parody on modern art and its aloof abstractions (and disappeared after a couple of days as unexpectedly as it had appeared).
Yet it wasn’t the provocations and punch-lines - which can be found also in many other official art exhibitions held in public spaces - but the project’s secretive nature that drew people’s attention and aroused discussions - and suspicions. Not even the city’s administrators had been informed, and neither did the Outsides project seem to have anything to do with the Regionale exposition, which was being held in the region at the same time. Rumours began to circulate but none of them seemed substantiated. What should the Bonn Guggenheim exhibition have to do with street art in Wuppertal? And why should a private art collector be interested in having a whole city fitted out with 'his' artists’ works without permission. If it came out he might have to face a costly claim for damages, if it didn’t there wouldn’t be any image gain for him.
Those who set out to investigate a little more, however, were soon to realize that it weren’t only local artists who had done the job in Wuppertal. Internet searches for the names mentioned on the flyer ended on the websites of the international street art and sprayer community. Most of the artists who had given a guest performance in Wuppertal - such as JR, ZEVS, OS GEMEOS or BLU - range among the most famous, world-wide operating figures in this “cultural sector” which exists alongside the official cultural sector.
Working illegally and holding events without permission is an essential trait of the scene’s style. However, the scale and variety as witness in Wuppertal had seldom been seen before from the sprayers and street artists scene. Those who know the scene had to arrive at the conclusion that this was a curated and well-prepared project. But this would mean that the underground scene had adopted methods which have been common practise in other fields of art for many years. In fact, curators have become the protagonists of many exhibitions and events. It is they who receive all the attention, not the artists involved. In Wuppertal, however, they remained anonymous, a part of the mysterious plot.
This way the suspicion experience was spiced up further still. Not only was the intrigued public left in the dark as to what was part of the project and why it had been done but also about who had initiated it conceptually (and also financially). Those Wuppertal citizens who observed the events from a somewhat more critical point of view might have wondered, however, why the Outsides group considered it so important to operate illegally. It is most likely that permission would have been granted for almost all their art works had they asked for it: they were not as dangerous or off-limits as to make it necessary to evade administrative approval. Quite the contrary is the case. At this point administration officials have committed themselves to preserve some of the pieces of graffitis. Hence: the strategy of creating suspicion by operating anonymously ended up casting suspicions on itself. Weren’t the initiators interested in arousing speculations? They surely wanted people to discuss and dispute the sense or senselessness of such a project. And didn’t they want to ensure the outing of the Outsides – a Red Bull Street Art Project to become an even greater sensation?