Where do you live? - Berlin

Where Do You Live? — Berlin

An ongoing Street Typography Survey

During his residency in Berlin, Zelin Seah extended his ongoing Street Typography Survey through observations of the urban landscapes of Moabit and Wedding. Unlike the deteriorating official neighbourhood signs that initiated the project in Ampang Jaya, Berlin presented a different form of public lettering: graffiti, tags and stickers layered across walls, streets and other urban surfaces.

Seah became interested in graffiti as an act of marking presence and claiming space. A wall rarely carries a single, permanent statement. New marks are repeatedly placed over older ones, creating an ongoing negotiation between those who occupy, alter and erase the same surface. These overlapping inscriptions reveal a city shaped not only by official systems of naming and identification, but also by informal acts of expression and territorial assertion.

The abundance of graffiti also challenged Seah's perception of urban order. While an isolated mark on a clean wall might appear as damage, the accumulation of graffiti across entire neighbourhoods began to resemble an almost organic condition of the city. Yet this apparent freedom was neither universal nor unrestricted. Differences between neighbourhoods, alongside the routine removal of graffiti and stickers from public transport infrastructure, revealed the coexistence of expression, regulation and maintenance.

As part of his observations, Seah conducted a small intervention by placing blank sheets of paper at selected locations. In one documented sequence, a sheet was marked by an unknown person the following day and had disappeared by the third. The experiment introduced an unclaimed surface into the city and allowed its subsequent transformation to unfold beyond the artist's control. The resulting documentation raises questions about who feels entitled to leave a mark, who determines whether it remains, and how quickly an urban surface can change.

Drawing from the lettering encountered across Berlin, Seah developed custom typefaces for a participatory survey. Through these reconstructed street fonts, participants were invited to write the word Home and share personal reflections on where they live and what belonging means to them.

For some, home is not necessarily a fixed address, but a shifting sense of familiarity, inclusion and connection to people and places. By approaching participants during their everyday movements through the city, the survey considers how individual experiences of belonging intersect with the public languages that shape urban space.

The project brings together street documentation, typography, temporary intervention and public participation to examine the relationship between official and informal representations of place. Rather than treating graffiti simply as either artistic freedom or vandalism, it considers the city as a surface continually written, contested, maintained and erased.

Participants' contributions and the ongoing survey are shared through @wheredoyoulive2025. Each participant is also invited to receive a physical postcard sent to their home, extending the exchange from the public street into a personal address.

Keywords: #StreetTypography #Graffiti #UrbanIdentity #PublicSpace #PlaceAttachment #Belonging #ParticipatoryArt #UrbanIntervention #MarkMaking #Berlin

Letters of the City, a participatory printmaking workshop at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, co-organised with Sukma Smita. Participants explored neighbourhood identity and belonging by creating postcards using a custom typeface developed from graffiti collected across Berlin.

Seah placed blank sheets of paper at several public locations in Berlin, observing how they were marked, altered or removed by unknown passers-by. Some interventions lasted three to four days, while others remain under observation. The experiment explores the temporary occupation of public space and the unpredictable nature of urban mark-making.

- Links - 

Surveys -  @wheredoyoulive2025

"Letters of the city" workshop -https://savvy-contemporary.com/en/events/2025/letters-of-the-city/