Simulacra and Strata
The distribution of spanning spray ultimately reflects your position within the infrastructure of city streets, the still-present rubble of New Orleans or even driving past initials and hearts spray-painted on a country bridge.
In the inner city, graffiti employs complex symbols and codes of representation that frequently allude to who's running those streets. Therefore, on the fundamental local level, it hails the pedestrians and occupants of the neighborhood and can provide them with a context denoting the territories of local gangs. Its second modicum would be to send a message to outsiders about the conditions within, including warnings or other signs where the user can decode according to their degree of familiarity with the locality.
As the train slips under the seemingly infinite, brick-armed bridges of Brooklyn, many of the outsiders never negotiate their motion through the space they're passing through. The semiotics are lost upon those passing through, the markings of the local culture are not relevant to their slow commutes home.
The layers of one's relationship with graffiti are innately complex, perhaps the most unbelievable permutation of this is demonstrated in the polemic relationship between the high-art-industry and the removal of graffiti from its original place. This is the ultimate defacement of graffiti, more so than the MTA's dedicated campaign and the media's criminalization of the art form. By making graffiti a commodity in the art world, it loses the deeper social implications it has as a billboard of public opinion, best understood in its local community.
By subjecting it to the standards of the art world, the locus is then upon the aesthetics of the form, not the intrinsic social message, which makes less of an impact the further away from its original space. Turning graffiti into high art becomes the most efficient means of neutralizing its political potency.
Then, there are those who still view graffiti as an act of vandalism that results in perpetuating what Jane Jacobs deemed 'the broken window theory.' Jacobs' hypothesized that physical signs, such as broken windows or poorly maintained homes, were symptoms of a larger problem. The unwillingness or inability of a homeowner to fix up their properties contributed not only to the decline of their home, but the value of other homes. She believed that one person's failure to invest in their homes signaled to others that they no longer had to exert the same effort to ensure the upkeep of their abodes. Overall, she predicted that this would cause a decline in the property values of the entire neighborhood.
Urban Planning Theories are Applied to the Framing of Litigation
Many governments have adopted these theories of sociopolitical concerns that suggest a decline in property values would also correlate to the presence of graffiti. Infamously, Rudy Giuliani of NYC adopted the attitude that graffiti was hazardous to communities on the grounds that it was a social act with negative consequences that resulted in a decline in property values. This, he deemed, made it a 'quality of life' crimes, or an action that had malevolent consequences for those concerned with the value of their real estate. In 1995, Title 10-117 forbade the distribution of aerosol spray-paint cans to youth less than 18 years-old. Stores also had to begin locking spray paint in glass displays behind the counter to discourage shoplifting. Businesses that would not adhere to these practices faced hefty fines for each sale.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has cracked down on graffiti, signing a bill that declared, "Graffiti is not an art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem." British law enforcement went on to pass the "Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003," which gave officers the ability to penalize homeowners who allowed protective boards surround their property to be used as surfaces for graffiti, seeing that this essentially gave artists blank canvases to use and avoid spraying directly on houses.
As graffiti becomes more socially acceptable as an art form, the British government retaliates with increasingly outlandish charges. While Giuliani's laws are equally threatening in terms of their potential to silence tactile media of social protest, particularly youth voices, the UK has used invasive technology to apprehend graffiti artists and then prosecute them for conspiracy charges. On July 11th, 2008, the members of an artist collective, DPM, were sentenced with the Conspiracy to Commit Criminal Damage at Southwark Crown Court.
The members were charged with this offense after an extensive three-month surveillance operation by the British Transport Police. This task force deemed their efforts criminal endeavors to cause about £1 million in future damage. As a result of this decision, five members of the group were imprisoned. While damaging public property is illegal and the artists could have used other means like impermanent paint, the actions of the BTP demonstrate a refusal of the organization to view the potential of graffiti as act of social empowerment.
In addition, the unpopular hyper-surveillance of the government is often the subject of graffiti murals (left: a Banksy spy-ninja-rat). Prosecuting graffiti artists with the same technology they are protesting proves that graffiti is a political statement. Much of the work of Banksy, for instance, encompasses the theme of the eroding place of the private individual in a public state that uses technology as an agent of social control.The justification for the Big Brother stance is that it is a means of protecting the British public from terrorists. As recently as March 24th, 2009, Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing covered the ludicrousness of a Metropolitan Police press release found here. The main goal of the campaign appears to be fostering fear in its citizens under the guise of security. It's a mass-indoctrination campaign aimed to make individuals feel pressure to 'out' those suspected of aiding and abetting terrorist activities.
The press release that Doctorow discusses explicitly says that Londoners should "go through each others' trash-bins looking for 'suspicious' chemical bottles" and to even tattle on anyone who 'stud[ies] the CCTV cameras." For those unaware of the sweeping changes in Britain, there are millions of cameras installed around London to combat terrorism while giving its citizens no option to avoid having their most minute gesture recorded. The individual is not in charge of the distribution of the film and, as stated in the press materials, is encouraged to know as little as possible about the camera, to know is to be impugned with guilt.
In tandem, this campaign upped its efforts and hoped to even "utilise... London specific media: radio and press, posters at the tube and rail stations" to maintain the clime of fear. The slogan of the campaign is "Don't rely on others. If you suspect it, report it" and this is frequently accompanied with propaganda and used for the purpose of heightening the country's awareness of the 'Confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline.' The entire situation is uncannily similar to the Orwellian sci-fi depiction of a future British state in the movie Brazil. One of the more laughable posters depicts the back of an older woman looking at a CCTV camera near a crowded public area in a recent report.
The accompanying caption reads, "A bomb won't go off here because weeks before a shopper reported someone studying the CCTV camera." The shopper is the model citizen, not only helping London's economy with their purchases, but by cooperating with their anti-terrorism campaigns. The vigilant paranoia and fear-mongering atmosphere is glorified by this propaganda featuring the best-case-scenario outcome. What if someone reports an elderly blind man tipping his head in the direction of the cameras? What if tourists gape at the cameras?
Obviously, the ramifications of this ill-applied campaign are that they evoke more terror and distrust among British citizens that actual terrorists could probably achieve. One means of resisting the intrusion of video cameras and surveillance equipment into the public arena is to decorate, say, CCTV towers with fake pigeons and a pirate flag.
Resisting the intrusion of video cameras and surveillance equipment into the public with artistic repartee is one of the reasons why graffiti artist Banksy is a darling of public opinion. His mass appeal comes from how many of his stencil-based works in Brixton and London depict rats, crows and monkeys getting caught up in surveillance equipment. One of his street art installation featured two crows and a pirate flag installed right under a CCTV camera. He's also fond of subverting pictures of classical landscapes with the Big Brother cameras looking over all.
Banksy's public commentary, ranges from the anti-anti-terrorism movement to his opposition pieces protesting UK involvement in Iraq. They have brought the concerns of these communities to the forefront of their public squares and village greens. Banksy may have, however, established the best marketing strategy of any anti-establishment artist to date.
(Continued in second post)
Jennifer Sussex has been featured in The Village Voice, The Chicago Tribune, PBS Student Voices: Washington Week, Our Young Art, The Gargoyle and The Michigan Daily. All material on this site is subject to licensing under the Creative Commons.
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