As we briefly talked about yesterday, NOLA Rising’s Michael “ReX” Dingler has emerged victorious in his battle with Fred Radtke, a.k.a. “The Gray Ghost.” Radtke took it upon himself to turn in Dingler to the police for placing original artwork around New Orleans, and Dingler faced $50,000 in fines and a possible jail sentence.
Today, Dingler posted a full account of yesterday’s court case on his blog. One of the more interesting (to us, anyway) points:
“RAdTke produced from his grocery ba[g] of cheap tricks the ANTIGRAVITY articles that first called into question his tactics, which has since become an issue that has cost RAdTke funding.”
I thought this would be a good time to clarify our stance on The Gray Ghost, so we blogged parts 1 and 2 of our late-’07 story on Radtke, and I’m going to talk about it in general.
Neither ANTIGRAVITY as a whole nor I as a citizen condone graffiti or defacing public and especially private property. I don’t know how much clearer I can say it—illegal graffiti is wrong, and so is any changing of property that doesn’t belong to the person doing the changing. You may wonder why I’m repeating myself, so I’ll tell you why: there seem to be people who believe that our piece on The Gray Ghost and our support of NOLA Rising means that AG is in favor of illegal graffiti and similar illegal acts. While distributing AG one month in the Marigny, I was verbally assaulted by a man who thought that our articles “invited graffiti artists” to hit Coffea and other businesses in the area, which is the farthest thing from the truth and not what our point was. We were specific in calling graffiti an “art-crime,” which is what painting on someone else’s property without the owner’s permission is. The point of our article wasn’t to praise graffiti artists, it was to call attention to Radtke because we believe that his actions are just as illegal as those of the graffiti artists.
It would be a simple matter of opinion if Radtke were simply covering up graffiti in public places, but he’s also covered up private art that was legally bought and paid for by owners of buildings and also painted on buildings despite the true legal owners specifically asking him not to. Because of these actions plus reactions from the citizens it represents, the Vieux Carre Commission has a problem with him, as noted in our articles. Yes, it’s true that his actions are technically approved by the city of New Orleans, but it’s been pointed to again and again that it’s sometimes by omission—the city doesn’t have the resources to take care of the graffiti problem the right way, so by default it lets Radtke run rampant. If our article caused a couple of Radtke’s “sponsors” to think twice about give him funding and/or materials, well, to put it quite frankly, more power to us.
Radtke accused Dingler of unlawfully putting art in public places, and the judge essentially found him guilty—Dingler is no longer allowed to post NOLA Rising artwork in public places. I’ll be as clear as I can: Neither I nor ANTIGRAVITY condones Dingler, Radtke or anyone else painting or placing materials on property owned by someone who doesn’t want it. It’s that easy. We do support people who want to have artwork on their own property and their right to not have it painted over by someone who deems himself judge, jury and executioner.
