Dear Naked City, You Suck... Graf Doesn't
When opening up the link to your article about the “lost art of graffiti”, the very first thing I noticed was that there are three people credited as being the authors of this article. This puzzled me. At first I didn't think too much about the fact that it took three people to write an article of this size, but after reading the content, I was quite astonished to think how one person, let alone three of you, could spew up so much drivel onto my computer screen that I became so enraged I decided that I just had to write you a response. Maybe only one of you is to blame, and the other two are just coat-tail surfing free-loaders, but that's besides the point. All I care about is the fact that this article exists and that there are possibly three people out there, living at the same time as me, in the same city as me, who think this way and believe that their thoughts need to be posted onto the internet for some reason. I usually don't respond to articles I've read while trawling the net, but never
mislead them, but in most cases it keeps order and peace in a struggling society. So graffiti may have some distant roots in that area, but modern graffiti, or street-art, is far from the “constant repetition of mindless tags and zig-zag artwork” (did you make this term up?) that you've described it as. Graffiti, in any way shape or form, is art... full-stop. The artists that do these works in the street are risking their freedom and sometimes even lives in order to put this stuff out there for the world to see. Some of it may seem less than artistic to certain people, but I struggle to see how you can draw any comparisons between a thrashed up power box covered in black marker and a kid covered in itchy red chickenpox.
Graffiti is about creativity and freedom of self-expression. When did public vandalism actually mean something, as you say it did? You refer to some mythical era in time “when the message was easily decipherable and registered immediately with the present day psyche... The days when graffiti was a genuine form of political and social protest, when the slogans were clever, pithy and sometimes even gloriously oblique”. Seriously guys have you ever heard of Samo? If you havn't then maybe you've heard of some artistic dude called Jean-Michel Basquiat? If not, look them up and you may gain some sort of insight into how clever, pithy and socially aware slogans can be. That is some real shit – far from the examples you've provided which are: 1) Not examples of modern graffiti as we know it, no matter how dated they may be, and 2) Not interesting or relevant in the slightest. Sure, graffiti may be a form of public vandalism, and yes, it is illegal on most walls, but if it wasn't, do you really think it'd be so popular?
Sydney is tattooed head-to-toe in paint and ink, and I have to agree with you on the fact that most of the tags we see as we traverse our city are pretty damn average. But in a city like Sydney, where street art is commonly accepted, extremely popular with our youth, and the level of detail and skill in some of these pieces are on par with any international scene, you'd think our citizens would be ever-grateful to those young boys and girls who do go out there and paint pictures on walls for the rest of us to enjoy for free. I sure as shit prefer the unique sense of individuality that graffiti has given our city, and all cities, to the Nazi swastikas, communist propaganda and territorial piss-stains that you compare it too.
When I see tags or pieces on a train or railway line the last thought in my mind is of oppression and totalitarianism. I see a place where some person has the freedom to be able to go out and possibly risk their life, all in the name of art and getting your work seen. Sure sometimes it may seem like some weird sort of haphazard and unintelligible arrangement of lines to the untrained eye, but to the artist, it is his masterpiece – his soul, his passion, himself – on that wall, window, seat or whatever. You think that most tags resemble something drawn by Mr Squiggle on acid, and as much as I'd like to point out that I hate it when people use the whole 'so-and-so on steroids/acid/crack' cliché, I'd rather like to point out the fact that if somebody gave Mr Squiggle some acid and let him draw on some walls, I'm pretty fucking sure that whatever he created would be one of the greatest goddamn pieces of art ever squiggled!
The city is a canvas to the graffiti artist, just as the body is a canvas for a tattoo artist. Much like how skateboarders are directly influenced by the terrain immediately surrounding them, graffiti artists must adapt and learn from their surroundings, continually looking for new ways to push the boundaries and
disrupt the average that some people find so comforting. I can't disagree more about your statement that they hold an amount of contempt for the local community. I'm sure some do, but as far as I know from first hand experience, I'm pretty sure when somebody decides to paint some sort of mural, stencil, piece, tag or even just paste up a sticker on something, that person is trying to make that thing look better. In what way is this being immoral or without social conscience? Some of the better artists I know don't even paint illegally and actively only do work within their community for their council and/or private businesses. The only people that may agree with you are the elderly old codgers who's ears are glued to their telephones all day as they complain about things that they aren't used to and in their mind are therefore wrong, which, as Jake Stevens has so eloquently pointed out above me, is “the first reaction most ignorant people have towards the unknown”.
Their is a risk factor in graffiti that is something that can never be overlooked. Writers are often risking their freedom and even their lives to put up some new artworks. Train tracks and graffiti go together like waves and surfing, and most graffiti artists I know either know of or knew a kid who's been killed by a train. It may seem like a silly, somewhat trivial thing to risk your life for, but what is life without taking risks? If that question dwells in your mind for longer than a couple of minutes then you obviously just don't get it, and probably never will.
I'm wondering if you guys actually did any research before writing this article, or did one of you just log on to Wikipedia, the one of you who can spell did the finger-work and typed it up while the other just sat in the back sticking a light-blub up your arse, offering up the odd literal gem like comparing graffiti to totalitarianism or stating something so dumb and ill-informed as that graffiti culture has a “strict adherence to a fascist ethic”? In what ways do the actions of graffiti writers even remotely resemble the doctrines of Mussolini's fascist party? Is there no concept of state in a graffiti writers psyche? Do they seek unity through totalitarianism or mass-mobilisation of their national community? It could be said that in the past graffiti seemed to embrace the working class on a larger scale and that graffiti artists somewhat rejected bourgeois culture, but in modern times people from any socio-economic background and upbringing are getting out and into graffiti.
I'm no graff-artist, but I know and respect a lot of artists in Sydney, so when I see a seriously ill-informed and honestly just fucking stupid and annoying article such as yours (however many of you it took to write it) I feel the need to put you in your place and make you fully aware of all the discrepancies and false/hypocritical/stupid statements that you've included in your article. People like you should just buy a one way ticket to somewhere like Kabul or the United Arab Emirates where it's commonplace for people to enforce hegemonic ideals onto others, but here in Australia we've grown to become a society that is somewhat accepting of certain peoples choices and respectful of the talents that people have either been born with, or worked hard at to attain a certain level of skill. Graffiti and the people who do it will be around for Eternity people, now Be Realistic – Demand the Impossible... you ignant muhphukkaz!
7TH FEBRUARY 2013