In East Austin, there鈥檚 a sight more common than new condos, food trailers and Tejano bars repurposed into young, hip "dives:" It's the poster seen above.
鈥淎rtists & Hipsters: How are you helping to gentrify East Austin? What are you doing to fight it?,鈥� the poster reads. The earliest date we can find for a photo of the poster goes back to , but longtime Austinites (including this author) remember seeing the poster even before then.
The poster has captured the attention of one eastside artist, who鈥檚 looking to create a dialogue around its message.
Aaron Bir is curator at the gallery on East Fifth. 鈥淚 saw these posters walking to work, daily,鈥� he tells KUT News via email. 鈥淏etween their confronting message, that could have been written directly to me and many of the people I know鈥� and just the general changing shape of Austin, I felt I was in unique situation to respond and be active.鈥�
To that end, Bir says his gallery is in the first steps of assembling an art show 鈥渢hat integrates new and old East Austin.鈥� He envisions a gathering professional and non-professional artists of diverse backgrounds to address the issues raised by the poster, and 鈥渃ompletely open the door to a true community art show in a nice space, and capture all the facets of what is happening here artistically. We've had two opening so far with very little of the local community stopping by. I want to go knock on their doors and ask them to come in person. Share, not exclude.鈥�
of the ubiquitous poster today on the Austin page of the social sharing site Reddit, asking if anyone could help him track down the poster artist. 鈥淚 want to contact that [artist] to see if they genuinely want to be part of a change in attitudes and showcase their poster as the focal piece of the show,鈥� Bir says.鈥� I find the poster鈥檚 plain text message to be very direct and honest. It made me think hard. I sure it does the same for other recent transplants.鈥�
Have you seen the 鈥淎rtists & Hipsters鈥� poster up around town? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
