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Graffiti from Outer Space
There’s a pretty cool article on wired about geek graffiti. It looks at technological advances in the field of street art, especially throwable LED lights that stick to their targets. For the most part, a lot of these new techniques are non-destructive, which is kind of interesting. But at the same time, I wonder - isn’t destructiveness part of the whole allure and “point” of graffiti?
A quote from the article that I wanted to look at in more depth, also:
“Graffiti is such a mainstay here that New Yorkers pass over it, but this catches their eye and maybe makes them think about how they interact with public space,” said Jack, a member of Visual Resistance who withheld her last name.
This is such an art school explanation that it drives me a little batty. For anybody without that background experience, a major part of art school is teaching you “art-speak” so that you can write artist statements and sound like a hot shot. The problem I’ve always had with it though is that it’s so vague as to be almost meaningless. So this guy wants to encourage people to “think about how they interact with public space.” Can anybody decode what that really means? Why is it important for people to think about that? What do people get by thinking about that?
I’m not saying there’s not something to graffiti, because there definitely is. But I’m very much confounded by the increasing intellectualization of it all. I was curious to hear other people who are into street art give kind of simple everyday language explanations of why they’re into it and what’s important about it. Is it okay for us just to think things are simply “cool” and leave aside all the post-modern cultural critique anymore?
April 7th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
the title of this post reminded me of something i heard on NPR the other day, which was a business this guy has, in which he spray paints advertisements on the tops of roofs, so that within a year when Google Maps rescans the satellite image archives, it’ll appear on the site.
just makes me wonder if someone might spray rooftoops with huge google maps graffiti….
April 7th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Wow that’s really intense. If you can find me an article or something about that guy and his business, I would be interested in reading it!
April 7th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Oh, that’s really cool. I wonder if the Google maps would censor an area or a building if you wrote some profanity really big.
April 7th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Oh, yeah… “Mao Zedung is a big ole JERK.” on the roof of your house.
Also, there was this fantastic book I used to browse through at the university library back in high school when I’d go there to do research for reports. The book was a collection of bathroom graffiti. It was published in the early ’70s I think. It wasn’t photos of the graffiti, it was just the text, typeset like a standard book. Very amusing, pages and pages of mid-century folk witicisms taken from bathroom stalls all across the nation. One I particularly remember was “Allen Ginsberg rewrote.” I wish I could remember any of the good stuff. I also wish I had a copy of the book for my toilet here at home.
You’d think this kind of graffiti would be obsolet now, since we have the internet. You know the kind I mean, sharpies in toilet stalls, nasty jokes, smartass comments etc. Fact is, bathroom graffiti is alive and well. Some of the best I’ve ever seen was in the bars of New Orleans. The old Shim Sham was probably tops. Infinite amounts of the most brilliants thoughts, drawings, hysterical jokes you’d actually *retell*. They’d paint over it about once a year, and it’d grow back like weeds within a few days.
Also, I remember from a film we saw in history class back there in school about the graffiti they found in the ruins of Pompei. Like the one that said something along the lines of “You people gotta stop writing on the wall.” Yes, that joke is that old.
This is my favorite form of graffiti. Thoughful stuff written in pen. My second favorite is the NYC urban mural stuff, done by daring young kids in the wee hours of the morn. I like that stuff because it brings together artistic skill with a taste for adventure. Keeps the culture in outlaw culture.
My least favorite form of graffiti is tagging. And I’m not talking about the very intriguing homicidal gangland back-and-forth kind of stuff, but the poseur middle-class kids messing up walls and furniture in their quest for a street authenticity that they will never acheive. As a matter of fact, it was one of these buckle-touchers that went into the Shim Sham one fateful night and drew his stupid name all over the men’s room, obliterating all the beautiful accumulated drunken wisdom of the ages.
The way I heard the story, someone caught up with the kid. He’s in parts now, deposited here and there around the banks of the Mississippi.
April 7th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
“Can anybody decode what that really means? Why is it important for people to think about that? What do people get by thinking about that?”
It means that the average lay-person takes for granted their interaction with public space. This also explains why some people hate graffitti: it’s a violation of what is acdeotable in a public place. And yet, the same person who complains about graffitti on a wall in public probably would never have stopped to consider the wall if not for the graffitti catching his eye.
It is important to think about it because the word “cool” can be used to describe thousands of different things. I mean, think about your site here– someone could easily say “The occult is cool” but why is it cool? This forum exists to flesh these matters out.
What people get out of thinking like that is a common ground. It is important for artists to speak the language of their patrons. Even a neo-primitive artist like Michel Basquiat, who was from the streets, knew that he had to have something else to offer his fans, and he played on the disparity between the “verbal correlative” (hi-falutin’ art-ese) vs. street lingo (slang, jive, hep talk).
April 7th, 2006 at 6:43 pm
graffiti is important because it is illusion breaking.
every tag is somebody (an actual somebody) screaming FUCK YOU, and your fake imaginary perfect world….
thats why its call bombing. and it performs the same function as a terrorist attack on a level. you arent safe, we are here, and you cant stop us.
and i hate artist speak. its possibly the most annoying bullshit in the world. and its how the whole friggin art scene works. who can pull out the biggest bullshit, and if you can stump professional bullshitters with your newfangled bullshit, you can get a gallery opening!! and then get drunk and walk around and bullshit…
April 7th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
“Graffiti is important because it is illusion breaking”
Yes, but even Jack from Visual Resistance admits that graffitti, like public space, has been taken for granted, because it is a mainstay. Therefore, the illusion is broken but merely gives way to another illusion. These geek graffitti pieces are deconstructing what we already think about graffitti– think about that.
I can understand why “artist speak” is annoying to some, but that’s because half of the people who employ it have no idea what they are talking about. They are regurgitating what they learned in school. But there’s nothing wrong with intellectualizing in and of itself– it is done daily on this website.
April 7th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
you can learn alot about a neighborhood & the people in it by being able to read the walls. perhaps to those who dont want to see it, it gets ignored to a degree, but for those communicating on a street level, its our own world….. instead of boring as fuck depressing plain brick walls we have a ornate storybook that details the lives & struggles of the people in the area…
the geek graffiti isnt really deconstructing anything new IMO, but then again im pretty much a Graff nerd and have been studying & watching & participating in NYC graffiti for the last 12 years or so… so , its all been done before….
i love graff. and i honestly dont feel comfortable when theres none around (ie midtown, financial district etc)
April 7th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
But what does *that* mean? That’s just a rephrasing of my question without the question mark. So what if people take for granted their interaction with public space?
April 7th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
I think it (blah blah interaction w/ public space blah blah) means that you don’t notice the decor until someone scribbles on it with a marker.
Also, I gotta respond to : “every tag is somebody (an actual somebody) screaming FUCK YOU, and your fake imaginary perfect world….”
by saying that while *my* world might be imaginary, it’s hardly perfect and I really don’t think a lot of those tags are coming such an anti-bourgeois “fuck you” sort of place. It’s probably more complex and less revolutionary than that. To my way of thinking, tagging isn’t couter-illusionary, it’s just more spectacle.
And some somebodies are more somebody than other somebodies.
April 8th, 2006 at 11:35 am
Me too! I guess I’ve grown up seeing it everywhere.
I love all the ephemera of the city. Crazy religious flyers, ads for under the table work and homemade beauty supplies or incense, the decaying gargoyles and names of wealthy dead businessmen in the masonry of the old parts of town…
All the genuine communications of humans, the communications not sanctioned and strained through archonic mechanism.
Related: Situationist movement
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/
April 8th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
I like that explanation a lot!
April 8th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
i guess you dont like tags
welp, graffiti is a threat to the bourgeois, on a very important level it completely obliterates the notion of ownership & property, some heavy stuff…
i think its more complex than anti-bougeois “fuck you” for sure, but actually REAL REVOLUTION, like, hundreds of thousands of mini very intense personal revolutions creating a huge intense colorful information creature thats constantly mutating & growing, its crazy stuff… and you can get locked up for it!!!! and people still, and always will as long as NYC is here for sure, and always have, and do it everywhere…. BUT it really become a youth thing, its really the actively revolting facet of Hiphop Culture, some worldwide race, class transcending new style of think..
in graffiti there are Kings… some somebodies have more ups.. but every tag is a reminder… i exist.
one
human?
April 9th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
kieth haring began as a grafitti artist and went on to be an ad for aids etc. tom wolfe wrote a great little book called the painted word which suggested that the entire modern art world was an intellectual construct. grafitti? it`s a written expletive driven by anger, resentment and frustration. all the elements of disenfranchisement. we don`t need grafitti to become aware of the uses of public space though, i comes naturally.