Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Graffiti
There was a news item on telly last night about how a group of "citizens" had got together to try and stop graffiti - which had clearly been ruining their lives - by asking the media and the music industry in particular to stop condoning graffitit, to stop making it appear "cool". There was a moment of brilliance when the official representative of the "citizens" was put on camera link with a real graffiti artist (called Rough, I think) who managed to completely undermine the position of the anti-graffiti group in two or three succinct and well-put statements. The official rep stammered and blundered his way through the rest of the item.
The "anti" group's main point seemed to be against tagging, which was rightly described by an expert as being on a par with canine territorial pissings and of no value whatsoever: the defence from graffiti supporters/artists was that this wasn't graffiti, it was rubbish and was no justification for moves to eliminate or persecute "real" artists. They brought out the historical significance of graffiti through the ages, and the relevancy of it's underground political expression and creativity, to which the only response from the "anti" brigade was that they wouldn’t like any graffiti at all on the walls off their homes, or on the streets where they live.
Now, fair play - I wouldn’t want to see the inane sprayings of some crack-addict 12yr old all over town either, but that's the problem, isn’t it? How do you stop kids being kids? What has history taught us about demonising something to stop it being attractive to children? Hmm? Something about red rags and bulls?
How cool is the mural on the Central Club opposite the Diab-Oracle? And the art under the bridges along the Kennet is also something that definitely improves the lives of those who have reason to wander around those parts. I want to see more large-scale art projects of an "urban" (God, I hate that term. It basically means "under-privileged", doesn’t it?) nature, as long as the quality of the art is good. But that's the problem - defining what is good and what is not. Now, imagine someone telling Lemmy from Motorhead that he wasn't allowed to sing because his voice wasn't "good". Problems arise all over the place with this issue.
Anyway, the whole news item seemed like a bunch of elderly, middle-class people who were rather hoping that MTV, Hollywood and the British Film Board would all see sense and ban the use of graffiti in all the various mediums, so that teenagers would stop thinking that graffiti was "cool", and would stop doing it. The cretins. That a bunch of adults can club together and work as a team to be THAT stupid amazes me. If they want to get rid of the graffiti in their street, then fine - easily done with some more paint and a chat with the local neighbourhood watch scheme. But to think that people feel the need to express themselves creatively and skillfully (and in the case of most good graffiti - eloquently) because they saw it on a J-Lo video? How can they be so stupid? You may as well assume that Radiohead were inspired to start writing music after seeing all the drunk and homeless buskers in Oxford tunelessly bawling their way through such classics as "Herrfurrnerr *hic*" and the classic standard "Pissed me'sel again."
The "anti" group's main point seemed to be against tagging, which was rightly described by an expert as being on a par with canine territorial pissings and of no value whatsoever: the defence from graffiti supporters/artists was that this wasn't graffiti, it was rubbish and was no justification for moves to eliminate or persecute "real" artists. They brought out the historical significance of graffiti through the ages, and the relevancy of it's underground political expression and creativity, to which the only response from the "anti" brigade was that they wouldn’t like any graffiti at all on the walls off their homes, or on the streets where they live.
Now, fair play - I wouldn’t want to see the inane sprayings of some crack-addict 12yr old all over town either, but that's the problem, isn’t it? How do you stop kids being kids? What has history taught us about demonising something to stop it being attractive to children? Hmm? Something about red rags and bulls?
How cool is the mural on the Central Club opposite the Diab-Oracle? And the art under the bridges along the Kennet is also something that definitely improves the lives of those who have reason to wander around those parts. I want to see more large-scale art projects of an "urban" (God, I hate that term. It basically means "under-privileged", doesn’t it?) nature, as long as the quality of the art is good. But that's the problem - defining what is good and what is not. Now, imagine someone telling Lemmy from Motorhead that he wasn't allowed to sing because his voice wasn't "good". Problems arise all over the place with this issue.
Anyway, the whole news item seemed like a bunch of elderly, middle-class people who were rather hoping that MTV, Hollywood and the British Film Board would all see sense and ban the use of graffiti in all the various mediums, so that teenagers would stop thinking that graffiti was "cool", and would stop doing it. The cretins. That a bunch of adults can club together and work as a team to be THAT stupid amazes me. If they want to get rid of the graffiti in their street, then fine - easily done with some more paint and a chat with the local neighbourhood watch scheme. But to think that people feel the need to express themselves creatively and skillfully (and in the case of most good graffiti - eloquently) because they saw it on a J-Lo video? How can they be so stupid? You may as well assume that Radiohead were inspired to start writing music after seeing all the drunk and homeless buskers in Oxford tunelessly bawling their way through such classics as "Herrfurrnerr *hic*" and the classic standard "Pissed me'sel again."
# posted by AK @ 18:08 
