yesterday i had a pretty indepth conversation about graffiti with my sister and it got me thinking. she asked me to try to explain graffiti more to her and why i'm interested in it. it was really refreshing hearing questions and attempts at analysis from someone outside of graffiti culture, and it made me look deeper at graffiti itself, like why we do it and what we are actually doing. just wanna talk about some shit, and get some feedback if possible.
but my sister asked me what was the purpose of tagging and bombing, and i explained the best way i could. she started talking about what her initial perceptions were and how she thinks it idiotic but interesting at the same time. i started to elaborate more and talked about some issues and mixed feelings that i've started to get, the more i've gotten into graf.
mostly i talked about the contradictions of respect and perceptions between people within the graffiti or hip hop culture and those who are not. like to get respect among the general public of graffiti writers, you need to put in illegal work, be up alot or be up with style (even though its pretty much all the same to people outside of graf). that makes sense because that is graffiti, but in the bigger picture, it truly is fucking shit up. like Bomb the Suburbs said, the more paint that gets racked from local hardware stores, the more the crime rates go up and the more throw ups and tags that need to be buffed, the more the city needs to pay and the more taxes go up. in the end, we are simply just making it more difficult for ourselves and the people around us in our communities to afford everything that we are contributing to. so bombing seems pretty masochistic when you look at the cause and effect of it. i'm not knocking throw ups themselves because some throwies are sexy as hell and can be just as cool and stylistic as pieces, but the act of bombing itself just seems to be stupid, especially if they are hitting mom and pop organizations or small businesses. but thats how guys like JA and Cope2 have become legends, through incurring millions of dollars in costs to the city and tax payers. but on the other hand, i know that no one wants to spend the time and work to paint a dope ass burner illegally when its just gonna get buffed the next day, opposed to painting multiple throwies and being up more. so theres alot of contradiction and strife with bombing for me.
also, shit like acid tags and scratch bombing only add to the negative public opinion that people outside of the graffiti culture have. i fully understand that graffiti is a counterculture and has a fuck the system mantality, but there has to be some distinction between fucking with the system and fucking with average people. shit would be so much sicker if there were one burner for every 3 tags or throwies in the streets. public opinion about graf would change pretty rapidly and a ride in the car or walking down the street would be like a full spectrum art gallery everywhere, which would inspire more people to write graf and enhance the scene. instead of half ass shit simply to get our names up, we should be putting 5+ color pieces up. putting up shit thats thought provoking to people walking by and that will get them to think. painting things with more depth than simply our names or little slogans next to throwies. graffiti can be a vehicle for so much more than what we are utilizing it for, like your political and social ideas. i mean, portland is a small enough city where we could organize some shit and get creative. i don't expect portland to be the graffiti renaissance of the US but we should try to break out of the stagnent state of graf.
personally, my main concern with graf is far from the general public's opinion of us, but i'd rather have respect and positive recognition from both the graffiti community and my local community then one or the other. i'm trying to say that i think we should look deeper into what graf really is, while in essence, saying to true it but also respecting its inevitable evolution. ya know what im saying? i love bombing and getting up, its fuckin addicting like no other. but i think we can do more with graf while respecting and practicing the foundation its built on.
apologies if this is preachy at all. i dunno, just some shit i wanted to get down. any thoughts?
