The SKRFF_ology project began on a chilly winter day by the Donaukanal where a group of artists gathered to experiment with spray cans and a utility knife. The public graffiti walls in Vienna were designated as a legal and safe place to spray in 1982. Since then hundreds of artists have left their mark, covering the traces of their predecessors in the creation of the present. On this day, the artists unleashed an explosion of colorful history by cutting into the wall in search of the original artwork.

Treating the walls like archeological sites and sgraffito sculptures, the artists revealed hundreds of layers of colorful paint representing decades of artistic, political and cultural expression. Through stop motion animation, SKRFF_ology compresses decades into seconds, documenting traces of the past made visible in the present. Though the full history can’t ever be seen clearly, the artists hope that juxtaposing physical abstractions of past and present can sharpen their view for the future.