Undenk
Encyclopedia
Resistance movement
A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...
street art
Street art
Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives...
group based in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, operating worldwide. Due to its conspirative nature, an exact number of members remains unknown.
The origin of the group's name comes from the German translation of the Newspeak
Newspeak
Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it refers to the deliberately impoverished language promoted by the state. Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an appendix in which the basic principles of the language are explained...
term "crimethink", which was used in George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
.
Undenk utilizes both official and unofficial, legal as well as semi-legal means of distributing and publishing its often ironic but always sophisticated, controversial and provocative form of progressive art.
Artforms
Undenk's workhorse are stickers, either seemingly self-produced in limited editions or professionally made in large numbers. The stickers are generally displayed in public spaces such as on street and traffic lights, on walls, trashbins and any other street-bound surface that allows for the pasting of stickers. Other likely locations may or may not include public transportation, public restrooms as well as buildings open to the public, either for entertaining (bars, clubs, sports arenas, concert venues) or administrative (schools, universities, municipal buildings) purposes.A special mention among the broad variety of Undenk stickers should be given to a design colloquially referred to as "Winston". Winston, also Undenk's trademark, is a stylized white rabbit looking backward over his shoulder, most probably named after the protagonist Winston Smith
Winston Smith
Winston Smith is a fictional character and the protagonist of George Orwell's 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The character was employed by Orwell as an everyman in the setting of the novel, a "central eye ... [the reader] can readily identify with"...
in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
". The most common interpretation sees in Winston a reference to the rabbit in Lewis Carrol's "Alice In Wonderland".
Winston has been spotted in such places as the Forbidden City of Beijing, New York City's Times Square, at the pyramids of Gizeh as well as in numerous metropolitan cities like Monaco, San Francisco and Sydney.
Another, yet less common form of Undenk's street-bound activism are stencils and graffitis, also in form of collaborations with other street- and graffiti-artists. In recent times, apparently home-made paste-up posters have been seen in various editions, numbers and designs.
Exhibitions, further activism and philosophy
Parallel to its low-fi, underground street-art, Undenk has participated in and staged several public and official exhibitions. During these exhibitions, in showrooms in Cologne and Berlin and during the "Bread And Butter" fashion weeks of Berlin and Barcelona 2006, the focus has been more on "indoor" artforms such as traditional cotton canvases, painted skateboards and recycled materials such as plain cardboard. Both approaches have the use of stencil-techniques in common.
In conclusion, Undenk's art seems to target political and social topics such as globalization, militarism and the evolution of capitalism, by subliminally and wittingly ridiculing and thus criticizing the hypocrisy and cynism of the 21st century Western industrial society. As a kind of manifesto, Orwell's flagship dystopia "1984" about the struggle of the individual in an overwhelmingly powerful and oppressive society seems to hover as a guideline in the group's approach on today's and tomorrow's developments.
Less a source of information and much more a display of the groups activism, art and philosophy, www.undenk.com and its affiliated blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
s are the group's official websites.