kids are changing the face of the city through their graffiti. Underneath these tags, the general aesthetic of the city is plain, basic, streamlined, and as these kids might tend to think, rather boring. Their graffiti adds exciting color, vibrancy, and a visually more dynamic face to the city of New York. This new face is interpreted in one of two ways: It either communicates that the city is completely losing control, or it sheds light on the practice of tagging as an increasingly legitimate form of art and self expression. In either case, these kids succeed in re-imaging and reconstructing the aesthetic and face of the city. Hip-hop culture “bombs” the city by spreading itself as far and wide as it can possibly go. This ability gives an otherwise powerless demographic a sense of strength and control, making it impossible for them to be ignored by society. The general forms of media utilized in the hip-hop culture (graffiti, rap music, and break dancing) all play into the language of freedom by providing the culture’s members with ways to express themselves which belong only to them and allow them to develop a personal sense of style. These methods of expression hold great meaning to them and thereby enable the members of this demographic to use them in any way they please in order to create something of significance.
I believe that graffiti and tagging is an attempt at ownership and notoriety when it is employed in a demographic that owns virtually nothing and does not have much to lose if they were to be caught in the act. However, I do not feel that Banksy is striving for ownership with his graffiti. I think that he either wants to send specific messages, as in his work on the Israel/Palestine security wall, or he attempts to make people laugh, giving them something more interesting and dynamic to look at on the streets as they make their mundane daily commutes. I feel the corporate world is boring to him so he injects humor into it in an attempt to lighten it up.
I feel tagging/defacing public/private property is in fact a means for exercising power, even though it may not be a legal one. Graffiti redefines and in a way rebels against the meaning of owning by promoting the idea of “finders keepers”. For example, even if a man and his wife own a convenience store, if a graffiti artist finds it and covers its outside walls with his art, he now owns that place as far as the street culture is concerned. If this is the case, anything in the world which is able to be defaced is up for grabs.
The imaging of hip-hop culture defies societal expectations and stereotypes of social scales by including not only the expected minorities, but the affluent white kids. In other words, the entire spectrum of the social scale is equally included in this sub-culture. The fact that the white kids are not expected to be involved in these activities only makes it easier for them to participate, for law enforcement figures are less suspicious of their public behaviors.
I think that the prosperous white kids are attracted to graffiti because it is a way for them to break free from their strict, scheduled lives and gain credit in a culture that intrigues and has meaning to them. They want to get their names out there just like the minority members of hip-hop culture. And, as mentioned before, the fact that they are not suspects of these activities makes it extremely easy for them to enter into this culture.
These hip-hop artists are able to activate, penetrate, and shift the physical, social, and political space of the city through the use of their own bodies. They completely alter the physical space by adding their own visual elements, mostly in the form of graffiti and tagging. Although it may not seem as such, their bodies are very important tools in accomplishing this task. In order to make their marks on the trains, they must hop fences, scale walls, and move swiftly among the tracks and trains in order to gain access to their canvases. They need their bodies to complete these maneuvers in order for their graffiti to come to life.
They activate social spaces by using their bodies to break dance on the sidewalks of New York. If their dancing were not meant to engage the public and make them stop to watch, they would practice their moves in a more secluded and private place. They use their dancing as a way to break up the usual, mundane social space of the city and therefore stimulate new kinds of interactions between people which do not usually take place. Rap music also plays into the social scene, since they either use the music to dance to, or they freestyle on the streets for everyone to hear.
The hip-hop kids penetrate the political space through all of their chosen forms of expression (graffiti, break-dancing, and rap music) by getting a rise out of the political figures of the city. They obviously got the mayor’s attention because he launched an entire propaganda movement, celebrity endorsements and all, which encouraged these kids to stop leaving their art all over the city. In a way, the fact that they had such a significant effect on the most powerful members of the city only gives them more drive and determination to keep using their bodies to create their art.
The graffiti artist makes a good point when he states, “yeah, I vandalism (sic), but I did something to make your eyes open up, right?” What he means is that while he does commit illegal acts of vandalism, he creates something that catches people’s attention in the process; something that gets them talking. The illegalness of the activity is a means to an end. While I cannot say that I agree with the illegal tagging of property, I do agree with the point he is trying to make. It is not the act of his creation which is significant but the creation itself. If he had been caught, the graffiti in question would not even exist. But he did not get caught, so he wants people to stop focusing on how it came to be.
The war going on between artists and bombers entails the discrepancy between putting well thought out, meaningful tags in a close knit cluster of social spaces and putting multiple tags which are not as well thought out in social spaces all across the city. This is a war of quality versus quantity. I feel that quality is more important because I believe that the general public would be more likely to keep my art where I put it if it were visually, aesthetically, and even conceptually appealing.
I feel that the graffiti in the gallery does still have an intensity, but not necessarily the same intensity. The taggers put the graffiti on the trains for the specific purpose of it having the ability to travel across the city and be seen by large amounts of people. When in a gallery, only a select number of people (the types of people who visit galleries) will see their work. While it is a great way to lend credibility, notoriety, and legitimacy to their chosen forms of self expression, I feel it takes away from the fact that this graffiti originated as street art. The art can exist successfully in both the gallery and on the street; however it lacks a certain edge and rawness when it is not illegal and its purpose is not to claim public/private spaces.
These street artists are able to claim the public spaces by leaving a mark in them which reflects personal style; a style which nobody else can copy. It is this uniqueness which allows them to successfully claim these spaces for themselves.
While these artists would most likely do an exceptional job reinterpreting how the city looks and who it reflects, the law says that they don’t have a right to employ the techniques (graffiti) which allow them to do so. If the city were to permit anyone to take on this task, my vote would be for the hip-hop kids; for they are common people with the creative edge our society needs and would definitely grow to appreciate.
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