By Ksenia Galouchko / Special to The Moscow Times
Heating units, which regulate heating in the city, can be found in
most courtyards and are usually squat, drab, utilitarian buildings with
little architectural value.
The only people attracted to the buildings seem to be the homeless
and graffiti artists whose art work has never, until today, found favor
with the energy companies who own the buildings.
If you look around the city, you can see more than 300 heating units
covered in graffiti — official graffiti — as part of a festival
organized by the city government and energy companies as they attempt
to co-opt graffiti artists.
“At MOEC [Moscow United Energy Company], we were constantly faced by
the issue of vandalism of our heating units: As soon as we would
repaint over inappropriate images, new ones would appear,” said Rayfa
Bitkova, the head of the company’s press center. “As a result, the idea
of the festival was born.”