Whether it is racism, sexism, homophobia, or just about anything we deem offensive, it can be found on the wall of a bathroom stall.  Bathroom graffiti has become a prominent method of sharing explicit and often unacceptable ideas or words in our culture.  As these words or ideas become less acceptable in our daily conversations, they begin to appear more frequently in public bathroom stalls (Gonos et. al. 1976:42).  Bathroom stalls provides the level of anonymity required to give graffiti artists full freedom to express all their thoughts that are often suppressed or considered taboo by the general public (Gonos et. al. 1976:42).  Various unacceptable words are expressed in this graffiti image (found on the lower floor or Koerner Library), one may note the use of the words “fag” and “chinks” which would not openly be stated in public by anyone without anonymity due to their offensive nature.  Another form of expression found in this image is an attempt to arrange sexual contact by providing a phone number and offering a service.  This type of advertisement is common in bathroom stalls across America (Gonos et. al. 1976:43).  One may also note an anti UBC statement in the middle of the image.  All of these statements support the idea that bathroom stalls have become a forum for the expression of words and ideals that are suppressed in public (Gonos et. al. 1976:48).  Regardless of their offensive nature, bathroom stalls provide an important place where those who disagree with social norms may anonymously state their controversial opinions without consequences.

Gonos, George, and Mulkern, Virginia, and Poushinsky, Nicholas
1976  Anonymous Expression:  A Structural View of Graffiti.  The Journal of American Folklore 89:40-48.

By Terry Cole (63724082)

Often associated with disenfranchised youth, graffiti art has been making waves in today’s public sphere. Many consider graffiti to be a jumble of colorful vandalisms designed to attract the passive bystander. To others, it is a sign of resistance, loaded with political messages. Graffiti art emerged in the late 1960s as a battle against the New York neo-liberalization forefront. Contrary to the upper-middle class, predominantly white New York, graffiti practitioners considered the activity as “multiracial, multicultural, multilingual, [and] multidimensional,” (Miller, 2002: 32). Today, graffiti continues to evolve and is found on all corners of the globe, principally in urbanized settings that are associated with the hip-hop culture.

A single stencil of Noam Chomsky’s portrait in black spray paint is found carefully tucked in a discreet, yet visible area of the UBC Rose Garden. By choosing this setting, the artist is sending a message of defiance by “vandalizing” this pristine (at least during the summer) tourist attraction within the campus grounds. The artist’s choice of Chomsky’s image asserts their opinion regarding the “social disorganization and urban decay [of today’s world],” (Kane, 2009:10). Chomsky is known for his work in media criticism, particularly with his book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. His book utilizes the propaganda model by analyzing the way in which media is organized. Chomsky depicts the majority of today’s media as controlled by privatized institutions, relentlessly influencing and shaping social agendas. One can speculate that the graffiti’s significance is to raise awareness within the UBC community- to expand on our personal beliefs and philosophies. After all, UBC is supposedly a place of mind.

By: Jenina Singian

Miller, Ivor L. (2002) Aerosol Kingdom: Subway Painters of New York City. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Kane, Stephanie C. (2009) Stencil Graffiti in Urban Waterscapes of Buenos Aires and Rosario, Argentina: Crime and Media Culture 5(9): 10.

Boswell, Katie. “Rose Garden in Winter.” Photo. Flickr.com 10 Jan. 2012. 08 Feb 2012

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/55654533@N02/6739326211/>

Although this photo was not taken by me personally, I thought that it should be shown as it portrays the debate that is commonly had over the use of graffiti. The picture was posted on the news, revealing a brand new invention coined “Graffiti Bot.” Showcased in an art gallery, the robot glides along the wall using various colours to paint “graffiti,” or rather, random scribbles, onto the canvas.
But can this be considered graffiti? Can a robot, programmed simply to paint be considered as creating graffiti? Or must graffiti have a motive – some kind of statement?
In Jeff Ferell’s book, “Crime of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality,” he describes graffiti as a medium through which different meanings are portrayed. Specifically, in his case study of Denver, Ferell situates graffiti in relation to marginalized individuals, and even goes so far as to say that individuals participating in graffiti “participate in a process rooted in young black cultural,” (Ferell, 1993). Ultimately, he portrays the idea that graffiti is not just paint applied to a surface, rather it is the message that lies within the process that is important, and which links individuals within a larger culture of conversation. For some marginalized individuals, graffiti is a way to anonymously create a statement that reaches the larger public, giving a voice to those who often go unheard.
In contrast to this message, the photo above portrays how the dominant society appropriates this medium of communication and controversy, and devalues it to a simple process of applying paint to a surface. By reducing the art form to a simple computer program, devoid of human feeling, the meaning and culture traditionally behind graffiti is lost.

By: Natalie Adams

Bibliography:

Ferell, Jeff. (1993). Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and The Politics of Criminality

Graffiti Bot Photo. (2011). <http://hackaday.com/2011/11/17/double-pendulum-spray-gives-this-graffiti-bot-some-style/>. Accessed Feb. 8th, 2012.

Our city funds graffiti and fines owners of buildings which display unsanctioned graffiti to try to eliminate its presence. It has been argued that Graffiti acts “as its own form of erasure”, if it is sanctioned since the purpose of graffiti is to speak about the politics of nonconforming (Halsey and Perderick 2010:97). My problem with this view, is that if  these forms of graffiti are at war than what is the prize, how is it won, and why does it excluded the viewers from its consideration.
In the streets I found examples of coexistence, and graffiti incorporated into the interior of a salon in close proximity. Research on these specific pieces yielded no information about the artists of the unsanctioned, and instead found city sponsored tours which appropriated these pieces. Thus, it was hard to understand the unsanctioned piece as a product of politics due to the lack of information provided, and their incorporation into businesses, but what these pieces did evoke was subjective empathy.
Similarly, there was no explanation of the sanctioned pieces or their location as being proximal to the unsanctioned. Additionally, I wondered whether the owners of the  salon believed in the power of their Graffiti piece to take away from unsanctioned pieces. Ultimately, the complex layering of politics at work around these displays enhances the confusion started by a lack of information, allowing for only limited sets of meaning to emerge to the viewer based on the artistically conveyed themes and subsequently induced empathy for both types of pieces.

-By Alice Bardos

Graffiti 1

Graffiti 2) Same building as Graffiti 1, but different wall

Salon Graffiti

Eastside Mural Tour
2011 The City of Vancouver, Electronic Document,
http://muralsvancouver.ca/muralism/

Halsey, Mark and Ben Pederick
2010 The Game of Fame, Mural Graffiti, Erasure City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 14(1-2):82-98.

The City of Vancouver
2008 The City of Vancouver: Graffiti. Electronic Document,
http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/streets/graffiti/

Graffiti can be used to make a social or political statement, a simple image, or even useless scribbling. The form of graffiti known as “ tagging” is a way for graffiti artists to literally leave their mark, by having a symbol or word that represents them. The purpose of these tags is somewhat controversial, however according to Gross 1997 “the tags used by contemporary graffiti writers distinguish signatures that identify the individuals who write them.”

The curiosity behind these tags is that many of them make it very difficult for the general public to read and understand. According to Gross 1993, “The words both reveal and conceal their identity. They reveal themselves to the insider or initiated but conceal themselves from the uninitiated.” In this case, the insider usually includes other graffiti artists in that geographical area or in some instances gang related groups. It is clear that the purpose of these tags is much different from graffiti art that is meant to display messages or argue viewpoints, in that it does not make the effort to be legible to the majority of the audience. Individual tag graffiti, as seen in the photograph, seems to serve no meaningful  function other than the defacing of public property. It seems that in some cases, such as the one on the dumpster, it starts as one person leaving their mark, followed by others mimicking the action. In my opinion, this sort of mindless tagging of public property has no place on our streets.

By Andrew Ledger

References

Gross, D. Daniel., Barbara Walkosz and Timothy D. Gross. 1997. ” Language Boundaries and Discourse Stability: “Tagging as a Form of Graffiti Spanning International Borders.” Et Cettera. 275-285. 

Gross, D. Daniel, and Timothy D. Gross. 1993. ” Tagging: Changing Visual Patterns and the Rhetorical Implications of a New Form of Graffiti.” Et Cettera. 251-264.

If the above is used as advertising, is it truly graffiti? This tag, found next to the Buchanan Tower sign at UBC, asks such a question. Advertising inherently links a product to a creator, while graffiti is characterized by anonymity and resistance to authority. As such, they seem like veritable opposites. However, the intent of both can coincide, such as with this piece, as seen in the chosen text and placement.

Discorder is the magazine for the UBC Student Radio Society, named after a portmanteau of disorder and recorder, which reflects the magazine’s independence and focus on music dissemination. Tags traditionally emphasize the writer’s identity as a way of demanding power and attention (Carrington 2009: 417), but this tag advertises the radio station and society. Does its lack of true anonymity negate its status as graffiti? I argue that it does not. The group might be officially associated with UBC, but the university certainly would not have wanted them to graffiti Buchanan Tower. This tag is small enough to slip under the radar of UBC’s cleaning crews, but is still evokes lawlessness and disorder in form and text on a building that is famously industrial-looking. Also, tags of gang names are similarly advertise a local group. As such, its placement sub-textually advertises this magazine as opposing the mainstream, even of the UBC system itself. Discorder benefits from this aura, without experiencing stigmatization, due to the technically-if-not-practically anonymous tag itself.

References

Carrington, Victoria
2009 I write, therefore I am: texts in the city. Visual Communication 8(4):409-425.

Dickinson, Maggie
2008 The Making of Space, Race, and Place : New York City’s War on Graffiti, 1970 — the Present. Critique of Anthropology 28(1):27-45.

Rafferty, Pat
1991 Discourse on Difference: Street Art/ Graffiti Youth. Visual Anthropology Review 7(2):77-84.

The practice of painting graffiti on freight trains as a medium to send images away from their points of production into a system of wider circulation has become widespread within graffiti practice (Ferrell 1998). Graffiti, when engulfing whole buildings or a part of a wall, has the ability to become a marketing tool for artists to promote themselves via the streets either openly or anonymously (Rafferty 1991); however, tags and images on freight trains provides a different avenue where artists are able to promote themselves across wide geographical and cultural areas.

This form has significant value to the artists and their work. An advantage to posting on freight trains comes with the ability to expand one’s art spatial. It appears that the trains work as a conveyer belt for the promotion of artists, their work and cultural meaning. The circulation reflects the liminal space for the graffiti; a transitional phase before reaching potential viewers. The wider circulation of art may also broaden the graffiti community due to how quickly it spreads geographically acting as a communications network. As Ferrell (1998) notes, freight work allows graffiti writers to communicate with one another and with their audience by sending images and identities into areas outside of their immediate reach. It is not to say that mobile art via trains is more valuable than stable art. Each form of art has its own added value for artists and viewers. Train art allows a broad network for communication and expression of ideas and culture due to art being sent into wider circulation.

Sources:
Ferrell, Jeff
1998  Freight Train Graffiti: Subculture, Crime, Dislocation. Justice quarterly 15(4):587-608.

Rafferty, Pat
1991  Discourse on Difference: Street Art/Graffiti Youth. Visual Anthropology Review 7(2):77-84.

By Kayla Morley

What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. This saying still holds true now, especially in the context of graffiti. As is the case with all traditional artists, graffiti artists too thrive for a sense of permanence in their work – to have their art remembered through time. Graffiti in public spaces are generally considered a form of vandalism, so many of these artworks are cleaned up by the community in an attempt to suppress the voices of the artists. Since they are mostly used as a medium to present political and social beliefs that deviate from the perceived norm, Graffiti lack mainstream acceptance. Thus, under the social pressures that constantly act against them, the graffiti artists have a much harder time achieving a sense of permanence in their work, especially when compared to more traditional art forms.

Despite the social stigmatization, graffiti artists nevertheless continue their efforts to thrive for permanence in their artwork. Even through vandalistic graffiti, the actions of most of these artists are driven by their desire to leave a permanent mark in the world, which becomes a part of their identity (Pani and Sagliaschi 2009: 1035). This prospect of permanence is central to graffiti. As such, when a particular graffiti remains visible over long periods of time, despite all the opposing social forces that seek to eliminate its existence, it further strengthens the impact of the artwork – thereby making it more permanent.

In a sense, what doesn’t kill you does indeed only make you stronger!

By (Tony) Meng Zhai

Pani, R., and S. Sagliaschi                                                                                              2009     Psychopathology of excitatory and compulsive aspects of vandalistic graffiti. Psychological Reports 105(3):1027-1038.