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.

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?

All the genuine communications of humans, the communications not sanctioned and strained through archonic mechanism.

I like that explanation a lot!

i love graff. and i honestly dont feel comfortable when theres none around

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/

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.

It means that the average lay-person takes for granted their interaction with public space.

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?

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)

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.

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…

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).

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.

just makes me wonder if someone might spray rooftoops with huge google maps graffiti….