Irving Washington Fenderson

Art Crimes

On Graffiti

Graffiti is a means of communication for the disempowered. Where there are few outlets for marginal voices in the mainstream, graffiti works as a communication strategy not only between the 'disempowered', but also to the broader community. As cleansurface.org (one of the best archives of graffiti on the net) notes, 'freedom of the press belongs to he who owns one'. Graffiti involves the creation of Identity, both individual and community. It involves Refusal - the taking back of space and the expression of Life: 'humans live here'. A two-fingered salute to the man.

Not everyone believes graffiti is a crime. The act of graffiti is an act of refusal: primarily of the law, but potentially many other things. It is these acts of refusal that make graffiti political, either intentionally or not. So let's look at the status quo.

Art as Crime?

Graffiti is generally looked at in the mainstream as vandalism or an act of deviance. South Australian Transit Cops like to talk of graffiti as bad because it 'heightens fear of crime in the elderly or underprivileged classes.' The Anti-Graffiti FAQ (online) takes an even more paternalistic view of young people and their cultures:

Graffiti writers do turn their lives around and become productive, responsible members of society. When you can engage a vandal in conversation stick firmly to the truth that graffiti is vandalism. Once in a while a discussion like this can help turn someone around. Some of the vandals are indeed socially undesirable. Others are just kids with an attitude. Deal with the attitude and bring the kid back.

Parents are held responsible for graffiti damage. Moms and Dads: discipline, respect, and self worth are all learned at home. When you don't teach and reinforce positive traits in your children you may have to pay for it.

Mark Davis's Gangland, an analysis of the 'near monopoly of baby boomer ideals and assumptions among Australia's cultural elites', notes that this paranoid monopoly often manifests itself as hostility toward youth. He shows many examples, amongst them the mandatory sentencing of youth in Western Australia and Queensland. In Queensland, the maximum penalty for a graffiti crime is seven years, three years longer than for common assault.

Speaking on repressive legislation by state governments, Chris Sidoti has said:

Juvenile justice laws and Cabinet submissions were driven by opinion polls and media reports that sensationalised crime. Such laws would not cut crime and only further deteriorate relationships between police and young peopleÉWhy are we looking at doubling the number of children in detention in Queensland at the cost of $100 000 a year when we are cutting the funds to youth services that stop crime occurring in the first place?

But the attacks are not only from the law. They also come from the propertied classes, as Richard Lachmann, a sociologist from the State University of New York notes:

Graffiti attracted both artistic and moral entrepreneurs. The former sought to entice graffiti writers to paint on canvases to be sold in galleries; the latter used graffiti as a sign of urban disorder and argued for its suppression as a first step in reasserting law and order against unrestrained youth and assertive members of minority groups.

Similarly, discourses that pose graffiti as crime or vandalism are an unfair attack on some young people because of the way they choose to communicate. They are mighty prices to pay for expression in a 'free and democratic' nation. Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free? Not likely.

I won't advocate 'tagging' here, but neither will I dismiss it as 'junk'. Personally, I don't like it. But who am I to say what graffiti is, or what signs are part of the communication channels of other communities? Think about tags. Scrawled names, 'tags'. Undecipherable like the signature on a cheque or the doctor's prescription. Different fonts, like Word for Windows. Not to mention the illegality of the act. Speed is of the essence - the style is built on that. Appreciate it. You don't have to like it, but at least see where they're coming from. Don't buy it. That's not appreciation: that's slavery.

HipHop

What is today known as graffiti (and could better be termed hiphop graffiti) is claimed to have been started by Taki 183, Cay 161 and Jnr 161 in the early 70s. The numbers following the names refer to the street they came from in New York. But graffiti has been around for centuries. More recently it has manifested mostly in toilets, as political acts, or as part of hiphop culture.

In these beginnings of hiphop, we see references to community belonging married with a reference to self. The culture has blossomed over the last 30 or so years to the full colour murals we see today.

The hiphop graffiti community is hierarchical. They refer to themselves as writers. The best are kings, to whom much respect is shown; those that show no respect are called 'toys'. Tags are about 'getting up', getting recognised, getting 'seen' within the community of writers.

Kevin McDonald notes that there is no class politics in the world of (HipHop) graffiti. It transcends class politics. Although this style of graffiti is more likely to be done by younger people, from roughly 12 through to 21. Graffiti Crimes notes that 'going over something in white or whatever is as much expression as tagging. Just less creative. [Tagging is] like 'graf school'. Younger graffiti writers (toys) practice tagging to get recognition and to learn control of the mediums.' Apparently graf writers replace the ink in their Texta's with boot polish to get the 'fade' - the faded tags you see in train carriages: a denial of service to the cleaners and more people get to see their tags.

Legality, Opinion and the Appropriation of Art

There are many who believe that graffiti provides freedom (in the psychedelic corner - Arrakis.com.au):

Plenty of 'hard core' graffiti writers think that graffiti is illegal by definition. They are not interested in having their work sanctioned by society, particularly if that would lead to commercial exploitation of the art form. It is nonetheless true that some of the most detailed and intricate pieces are done on legal walls, where writers can work undisturbed.

Compare that to the 'Anti Graffiti' intellectuals (in the corner of a galaxy far far away - The Anti Graffiti FAQ):

Graffiti advocates do not want graffiti legalised. The act of painting illegally is a major part of the thrill. Breaking the law and avoiding arrest is part of their culture. The need for so called legal walls is a continual rallying point with graffiti advocates but in reality the 'legal wall' is part of their deceit.

Richard Lachmann again:

The term 'graffiti vandalism' was used by authorities and a cooperative press to construct an ideology of graffiti at odds with the lived experiences of the graffiti writers and with the views many ... residents had of the graffiti in their neighborhoods.

This leads to situations of dissonance... and there are the further issues of 'containment' that need to be addressed as well.

Earlier this year, the Internet youth portal Scape (a shotgun wedding between Channel Ten and Village Roadshow, short-lived as most shotgun weddings are) had some 'pieces' done in and around Greville St in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran. (Pieces are the larger, multi-coloured works.)

It's incredibly unlikely that Scape will be prosecuted, even thought their pieces were as illegal as any individuals'. This is by no means the only example of this. Sony Playstation have done it for years, and IBM's new Linux campaign depends on stencils as marketing. In fact, graffiti stencils sprayed onto pavements are the corporate sector's newest addition to the corps of 'viral marketing' strategies. Local councils have already been asked if they'll prosecute the stencil-makers. They won't, of course. Not when the target is a huge corporation: it would cost them an arm and a leg in legal fees, for a start.

Besides, the Scape pieces were bad. They had no style. Even I could see that and I am merely an observer. The pieces were very quickly slashed by local kids - who, having been brought up watching tv, can at least recognise the difference between art and ads.

The Politics of Space

First, I'd like to talk about space in a very literal sense. Toilet graffiti, for example, is so ubiquitous as to be part of the 'public toilet landscape'. The differences between men's toilet and women's toilet graffiti aside (check out the graffiti in the wrong toilet sometime), there's a guaranteed audience coupled with anonymity. Perfect but boring. Graffiti is also about taking risks: the semi-privacy of the toilet is probably the safest place in which to practice your art.

Now I'd like to talk about the re-appropriation of space - to take from a dominant culture and use it for another purpose.

Kevin McDonald refers to Auge's theory of the non-places:

If place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a place which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with an identity will be a non-place.

For eg: Airports, hotel chains, large retail outlets, shopping malls, and railway stations. They are 'functional, devoid of opportunities for dialogue and encounter with the other'. Or as my friend Chook says, 'there's a conspiracy of silence'.

...and Crime as Art

The logic of graffiti: in the subway, on the sides of Rolls Royces, bus shelters, schools or hoardings demands the circulation of your personalised sign, often simply your abstracted 'tag' signature. A tag is a 'me' statement that plants a semiotic 'virus' inside the civic body - it microscopically alters the urban visual code.
(Arrakis)

Before I knew about stylez and crews, I liked the whole idea that there's this huge faction of kids underground who have totally different values. They rack cans and hang out in tunnels with their friends, they get covered in paint and they are the inner city, they treat the city as their giant jungle gym. They explore, and they take advantage of the fact that the city belongs to them too. They are style Kingz, they have super crazy perspectives on visual art and representation, a value system based on drawing ability and guts. Instantaneous gratification as the sun rises, and there's you for everyone to see. The idea that writerz know the ins and outs of the law and the transit - they know secret places, urban retreats. They are a side effect of our culture, a hybrid of ART and CRIME.
('Art Crimes: Frequently Asked Questions', signed AtreK, sf15@prism.gatech.edu)

The corporate mediascape doesn't mind shoving their signs in our faces, but they are unwilling to take what they give. When we fight back with signs, we intrude on their property, physically and fiscally. On their walls, billboards, trains. But as we do this, their signs disappear into a haze. The boring and staid is replaced by the striking and beautiful. Not only at the scene of the graffiti, but by the diminishing of the value of their signs in cultural battlefield that is our physical society.

The current re-awakening of interest in the filthy underbelly of our own increasingly centralised uniformed world economy and political orders just might be a bold attempt to keep a bit of difference and rawness in our lives.
(Arrakis)

Further we have weird graffiti-visionaries like Rammellzee in New York, inventing incredible warring alphabets: 'In a war against symbols which have been wrongly titled, only the letter can fight.'

Conclusion

I'd like to end with some other people's ideas on the matter.

Graffiti is by definition a marking or scarification upon the social body. It is a symbolic activity by people who by and large have little or no access to the media or power structures within society - they are acknowledged only by the stereotypical cries of 'gang member', 'vandal', 'dole bludger', 'anarchist', 'punk' or simply 'youth'.

If you find yourself without a cultural code or legal language what do you do but transgress the order of things within the city of concrete signs and build your own corrosive codes and values? You have to 'get a life' through performing in public - even if it's in the dark.
(Arrakis)

Streets, sidewalks, clocks, courts, and commercials. Whose agenda is this? When a corporation leaves a message in public space, it is called advertising. When a citizen leaves a message in public space, it is called vandalism... A white van passes. The side reads: Specialised Cleaning Services - Fire/Wind/Water/Vandalism. Finally, the latter is recognised among acts of god. (Karen Eliot)

NO GOVERNMENT IS ALLOWED TO STEAL
SUBCONSCIOUS SYMBOLS.
(Rammellzee)

And finally, The Abrupt Manifesto:

In a world in which everything has been reduced to 'infotainment' and corporate masturbation, hope is to be found in whatever breaks the homogeneity or defies expectations. Our tactics are surprise, confusion, disgust and enchantment. Better to feel offended, we maintain, than not to feel at all. If you are angry, it is better than being miserable. But we'd just as soon turn around and make you laugh.

Footnotes, References and Apologies

www.arrakis.com.au/mindspace.html
(anarchist pro-graffiti)
www.nhwatch.asn.au/graffiti.htm
(potentially the largest collection of anti-graf jpgs)
www.cleansurface.org
(Culture Jammers - good pics)
www.graffiti.org
(Hip Hop - awesomely extensive)

Searching for Subjectivity - Kevin McDonald (Melbourne University)
Gangland - Mark Davis

For unaccredited words, I apologise. Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it.



							Irving Washington Fenderson


								Art Crimes On Graffiti


								Graffiti is a means of communication for the disempowered. Where there are few outlets for marginal voices in the mainstream, graffiti works as a communication strategy not only between the 'disempowered', but also to the broader community. As cleansurface.org (one of the best archives of graffiti on the net) notes, 'freedom of the press belongs to he who owns one'. Graffiti involves the creation of Identity, both individual and community. It involves Refusal - the taking back of space and the expression of Life: 'humans live here'. A two-fingered salute to the man. Not everyone believes graffiti is a crime. The act of graffiti is an act of refusal: primarily of the law, but potentially many other things. It is these acts of refusal that make graffiti political, either intentionally or not. So let's look at the status quo. Art as Crime? Graffiti is generally looked at in the mainstream as vandalism or an act of deviance. South Australian Transit Cops like to talk of graffiti as bad because it 'heightens fear of crime in the elderly or underprivileged classes.' The Anti-Graffiti FAQ (online) takes an even more paternalistic view of young people and their cultures: Graffiti writers do turn their lives around and become productive, responsible members of society. When you can engage a vandal in conversation stick firmly to the truth that graffiti is vandalism. Once in a while a discussion like this can help turn someone around. Some of the vandals are indeed socially undesirable. Others are just kids with an attitude. Deal with the attitude and bring the kid back. Parents are held responsible for graffiti damage. Moms and Dads: discipline, respect, and self worth are all learned at home. When you don't teach and reinforce positive traits in your children you may have to pay for it. Mark Davis's Gangland, an analysis of the 'near monopoly of baby boomer ideals and assumptions among Australia's cultural elites', notes that this paranoid monopoly often manifests itself as hostility toward youth. He shows many examples, amongst them the mandatory sentencing of youth in Western Australia and Queensland. In Queensland, the maximum penalty for a graffiti crime is seven years, three years longer than for common assault. Speaking on repressive legislation by state governments, Chris Sidoti has said: Juvenile justice laws and Cabinet submissions were driven by opinion polls and media reports that sensationalised crime. Such laws would not cut crime and only further deteriorate relationships between police and young peopleÉWhy are we looking at doubling the number of children in detention in Queensland at the cost of $100 000 a year when we are cutting the funds to youth services that stop crime occurring in the first place? But the attacks are not only from the law. They also come from the propertied classes, as Richard Lachmann, a sociologist from the State University of New York notes: Graffiti attracted both artistic and moral entrepreneurs. The former sought to entice graffiti writers to paint on canvases to be sold in galleries; the latter used graffiti as a sign of urban disorder and argued for its suppression as a first step in reasserting law and order against unrestrained youth and assertive members of minority groups. Similarly, discourses that pose graffiti as crime or vandalism are an unfair attack on some young people because of the way they choose to communicate. They are mighty prices to pay for expression in a 'free and democratic' nation. Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free? Not likely. I won't advocate 'tagging' here, but neither will I dismiss it as 'junk'. Personally, I don't like it. But who am I to say what graffiti is, or what signs are part of the communication channels of other communities? Think about tags. Scrawled names, 'tags'. Undecipherable like the signature on a cheque or the doctor's prescription. Different fonts, like Word for Windows. Not to mention the illegality of the act. Speed is of the essence - the style is built on that. Appreciate it. You don't have to like it, but at least see where they're coming from. Don't buy it. That's not appreciation: that's slavery. HipHop What is today known as graffiti (and could better be termed hiphop graffiti) is claimed to have been started by Taki 183, Cay 161 and Jnr 161 in the early 70s. The numbers following the names refer to the street they came from in New York. But graffiti has been around for centuries. More recently it has manifested mostly in toilets, as political acts, or as part of hiphop culture. In these beginnings of hiphop, we see references to community belonging married with a reference to self. The culture has blossomed over the last 30 or so years to the full colour murals we see today. The hiphop graffiti community is hierarchical. They refer to themselves as writers. The best are kings, to whom much respect is shown; those that show no respect are called 'toys'. Tags are about 'getting up', getting recognised, getting 'seen' within the community of writers. Kevin McDonald notes that there is no class politics in the world of (HipHop) graffiti. It transcends class politics. Although this style of graffiti is more likely to be done by younger people, from roughly 12 through to 21. Graffiti Crimes notes that 'going over something in white or whatever is as much expression as tagging. Just less creative. [Tagging is] like 'graf school'. Younger graffiti writers (toys) practice tagging to get recognition and to learn control of the mediums.' Apparently graf writers replace the ink in their Texta's with boot polish to get the 'fade' - the faded tags you see in train carriages: a denial of service to the cleaners and more people get to see their tags. Legality, Opinion and the Appropriation of Art There are many who believe that graffiti provides freedom (in the psychedelic corner - Arrakis.com.au): Plenty of 'hard core' graffiti writers think that graffiti is illegal by definition. They are not interested in having their work sanctioned by society, particularly if that would lead to commercial exploitation of the art form. It is nonetheless true that some of the most detailed and intricate pieces are done on legal walls, where writers can work undisturbed. Compare that to the 'Anti Graffiti' intellectuals (in the corner of a galaxy far far away - The Anti Graffiti FAQ): Graffiti advocates do not want graffiti legalised. The act of painting illegally is a major part of the thrill. Breaking the law and avoiding arrest is part of their culture. The need for so called legal walls is a continual rallying point with graffiti advocates but in reality the 'legal wall' is part of their deceit. Richard Lachmann again: The term 'graffiti vandalism' was used by authorities and a cooperative press to construct an ideology of graffiti at odds with the lived experiences of the graffiti writers and with the views many ... residents had of the graffiti in their neighborhoods. This leads to situations of dissonance... and there are the further issues of 'containment' that need to be addressed as well. Earlier this year, the Internet youth portal Scape (a shotgun wedding between Channel Ten and Village Roadshow, short-lived as most shotgun weddings are) had some 'pieces' done in and around Greville St in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran. (Pieces are the larger, multi-coloured works.) It's incredibly unlikely that Scape will be prosecuted, even thought their pieces were as illegal as any individuals'. This is by no means the only example of this. Sony Playstation have done it for years, and IBM's new Linux campaign depends on stencils as marketing. In fact, graffiti stencils sprayed onto pavements are the corporate sector's newest addition to the corps of 'viral marketing' strategies. Local councils have already been asked if they'll prosecute the stencil-makers. They won't, of course. Not when the target is a huge corporation: it would cost them an arm and a leg in legal fees, for a start. Besides, the Scape pieces were bad. They had no style. Even I could see that and I am merely an observer. The pieces were very quickly slashed by local kids - who, having been brought up watching tv, can at least recognise the difference between art and ads. The Politics of Space First, I'd like to talk about space in a very literal sense. Toilet graffiti, for example, is so ubiquitous as to be part of the 'public toilet landscape'. The differences between men's toilet and women's toilet graffiti aside (check out the graffiti in the wrong toilet sometime), there's a guaranteed audience coupled with anonymity. Perfect but boring. Graffiti is also about taking risks: the semi-privacy of the toilet is probably the safest place in which to practice your art. Now I'd like to talk about the re-appropriation of space - to take from a dominant culture and use it for another purpose. Kevin McDonald refers to Auge's theory of the non-places: If place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a place which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with an identity will be a non-place. For eg: Airports, hotel chains, large retail outlets, shopping malls, and railway stations. They are 'functional, devoid of opportunities for dialogue and encounter with the other'. Or as my friend Chook says, 'there's a conspiracy of silence'. ...and Crime as Art The logic of graffiti: in the subway, on the sides of Rolls Royces, bus shelters, schools or hoardings demands the circulation of your personalised sign, often simply your abstracted 'tag' signature. A tag is a 'me' statement that plants a semiotic 'virus' inside the civic body - it microscopically alters the urban visual code. (Arrakis) Before I knew about stylez and crews, I liked the whole idea that there's this huge faction of kids underground who have totally different values. They rack cans and hang out in tunnels with their friends, they get covered in paint and they are the inner city, they treat the city as their giant jungle gym. They explore, and they take advantage of the fact that the city belongs to them too. They are style Kingz, they have super crazy perspectives on visual art and representation, a value system based on drawing ability and guts. Instantaneous gratification as the sun rises, and there's you for everyone to see. The idea that writerz know the ins and outs of the law and the transit - they know secret places, urban retreats. They are a side effect of our culture, a hybrid of ART and CRIME. ('Art Crimes: Frequently Asked Questions', signed AtreK, sf15@prism.gatech.edu) The corporate mediascape doesn't mind shoving their signs in our faces, but they are unwilling to take what they give. When we fight back with signs, we intrude on their property, physically and fiscally. On their walls, billboards, trains. But as we do this, their signs disappear into a haze. The boring and staid is replaced by the striking and beautiful. Not only at the scene of the graffiti, but by the diminishing of the value of their signs in cultural battlefield that is our physical society. The current re-awakening of interest in the filthy underbelly of our own increasingly centralised uniformed world economy and political orders just might be a bold attempt to keep a bit of difference and rawness in our lives. (Arrakis) Further we have weird graffiti-visionaries like Rammellzee in New York, inventing incredible warring alphabets: 'In a war against symbols which have been wrongly titled, only the letter can fight.' Conclusion I'd like to end with some other people's ideas on the matter. Graffiti is by definition a marking or scarification upon the social body. It is a symbolic activity by people who by and large have little or no access to the media or power structures within society - they are acknowledged only by the stereotypical cries of 'gang member', 'vandal', 'dole bludger', 'anarchist', 'punk' or simply 'youth'. If you find yourself without a cultural code or legal language what do you do but transgress the order of things within the city of concrete signs and build your own corrosive codes and values? You have to 'get a life' through performing in public - even if it's in the dark. (Arrakis) Streets, sidewalks, clocks, courts, and commercials. Whose agenda is this? When a corporation leaves a message in public space, it is called advertising. When a citizen leaves a message in public space, it is called vandalism... A white van passes. The side reads: Specialised Cleaning Services - Fire/Wind/Water/Vandalism. Finally, the latter is recognised among acts of god. (Karen Eliot) NO GOVERNMENT IS ALLOWED TO STEAL SUBCONSCIOUS SYMBOLS. (Rammellzee) And finally, The Abrupt Manifesto: In a world in which everything has been reduced to 'infotainment' and corporate masturbation, hope is to be found in whatever breaks the homogeneity or defies expectations. Our tactics are surprise, confusion, disgust and enchantment. Better to feel offended, we maintain, than not to feel at all. If you are angry, it is better than being miserable. But we'd just as soon turn around and make you laugh. Footnotes, References and Apologies www.arrakis.com.au/mindspace.html (anarchist pro-graffiti) www.nhwatch.asn.au/graffiti.htm (potentially the largest collection of anti-graf jpgs) www.cleansurface.org (Culture Jammers - good pics) www.graffiti.org (Hip Hop - awesomely extensive) Searching for Subjectivity - Kevin McDonald (Melbourne University) Gangland - Mark Davis For unaccredited words, I apologise. Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it.