SOCB50H3 Study Guide - Final Guide: Hip Hop, Juvenile Delinquency, Flyposting
Our Desires Are Unovernable – Writing graffiti in urban space
Introduction:
- Graffiti exists as paradoxical phenomenon
o Aesthetic practice and criminal activity
▪ Practitioners assert visual merit and cultural value
▪ Detractors – removal from urban streetscapes and prosecution
of graffiti writers
- Public discourse and public debate
o Rudy Giuliani – 80s + defining importance to issue of graffiti
eradication from subway system in NY
▪ Symbolic and actual regeneration
o Australia – local Gov. complained of graffiti removal from municipality
o Britain – graffiti features as one of activities target by legislation
outlawing antisocial behavior
▪ Littering, flyposting, spitting, public drunkenness, etc.…
- Academic writing on graffiti – analysis as sociological subculture, juvenile
delinquency, historical phenomenon and regulatory problem
o Exists – books, video games, websites, magazines… devoted to graffiti
o Ranging - hip-hop to culture hamming to stenciling
- Previously hidden aspects of graffiti culture
o Complex of motivations for graffiti writing and sense of cultural
belonging graffiti can generate for young people
o Shifting threshold between art and vandalism
o Writers reactions to blank surfaces and clean spaces
o Graffitis interconnections with other criminal activities
- Under-researched issues that render graffiti a difficult problem
o For policy-makers – unable to banish it from urban space
o For criminology – graffiti hard to categorize, since it might be either
illegal subculture, or intractable problem of crime prevention or index
of persistent juvenile delinquency
- Interviews with graffiti writers
o Focusing on matters of desire, pleasure and vision in act of illicit
writing
o Wall in Melbourne written in rounded cursive script - Our desires are
ungovernable
o Demonstrates – graffiti is about pleasure and desire in the act of
writing
- Discussion – graffiti culture and risky pleasures it offers its members
o Experience of select group of writers – limits capacity to tell story of
any 1 writer in-depth or to flesh out process of becoming a graffiti
writer
o Becoming-writer is heterogeneous event – nuanced for each and
every writer
Image, sign, affect: writing the corporeal
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- Graffiti writers
o Recognize their works from critical part of plane of significant
investing urban landscapes
o Know that writing graffiti is far from static or 2-dimensional activity
involving application of paint to surface
o Most understand it to be affective process that does things to writers
bodies (and onlookers) as much as bodies of metal, concrete and
plastic (compose the surfaces of urban worlds)
o Thought as destructive but affective as well
- Affect
o Main criticism - most commentators merge idea of affect with emotion
o Invoke work of Brain Massumi – draws on authors; affect is akin to
ways in which the body can connect with itself and with the world
o We are never alone because affect basically ways of connecting to
others and to other situations
o Our angle of participation in processes larger than ourselves
o Intensified affect comes stronger sense of embeddedness in larger
field of life - heightened sense of belonging (w other ppl and places)
- Affect – has to do with intensity rather than identity
o Questions
▪ Of writers what does it feel like to write illicitly?
▪ Of those who name or respond to graffiti in various ways -
what feelings emerge from encountering graffiti?
▪ How do these relate to politico-cultural and legal factors, which
limit what it is possible to say and do about a particular image?
o Based on understanding - 1 never just a writer, observer, young
person or outraged citizen
▪ Rather locales of potential whose subjectivities (re) made
according to social roles ascribed and desire investing various
networks (familial, residential, pedagogical, cultural)
- Agree – admit that graffiti connects bodies known & un through proliferation
of images
o Connection minor /substantial interruption to ones sense of proper
o Reinforcement of ones view of sad state of youth of today
o Vibrancy of counter culture
o Failure of zero tolerance
o Rapid response removal policies
➢ Graffiti as image connects bodies
- Graffiti also forges connections largely unremarked by those thinking and
writing about its occurrence
o Connects the writer to city through act of writing since it is act which
places quite strict demands on writers bodies
▪ Intellectually – having to put up with cold, dark or generally
inclement conditions for several hours while writing
▪ Culturally – feeling pressure to exevute a good pieve that wont
be marked up by rival writers
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find more resources at oneclass.com
▪ Legally – omnipresent threat of getting busted
▪ Financially – what the writer forwent in order to be able to
afford quality paint in right range of colors…
▪ Writing – by using aerosol can and felt tip marker as key
prosthetics for connecting self and world
• Also means of collapsing distinctions
o Connect themselves to possible reactions city musters w to particular
image or set of images produced over time
o Therefore graffiti shouldnt be divorced from event of writing illicitly
- Not be equated to cultivation or search for identity
o Fame – attaining status or identity of a king
o Pleasure – intensity of feeling, which accompanies motioning of
aerosol can
o Writing induces series of singular moments where identity is put
asunder through performance of becoming-immanent – denoting
moments where a body, inhabits space and time which resist
subjective & objective attempts to classify, name or order events
- Connection – illicit writing cant be adequately described in binary terms
o Good vs bad art, criminal vs legal activity, creative vs destructive
images, appropriate vs inappropriate placement….
o Instead needs to be considered in both/and manner
- Graffiti involves something intangible, resists attempts to capture meaning,
purpose, final referent
o = Passing of affect
o Affect as whole, then, is the virtual co-presence of potentials
Reasons for writing:
- Catching sight of tag or mural on wall, glances lead to speculation as to why
someone wrote that word or drew an image in such a place
- Commonplace assumptions – writers supposed boredom, desire to damage
and deface, or lack of respect for others property
o Drive municipal graffiti management policies
o Desire to go beyond assumptions to discover writers motivations for
engaging in graffiti and involvement in graffiti culture
- Original involvement – derived from combo of aesthetic appeal for them and
social activity might make friends with others
o Young people drawn to dance venues or sports for social interactions
o Immersed in culture – writing characterized by factors viewed in +ve
ways
▪ By respondents and describing powerful emotional and
physical sensations in act
• Dimension of writing – affective or visceral
▪ Sensations – pride, pleasure, enjoyment derived from sharing
activity with friends, and recognition from writing community
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Our desires are unovernable writing graffiti in urban space. Graffiti exists as paradoxical phenomenon delinquency, historical phenomenon and regulatory problem: ranging - hip-hop to culture hamming to stenciling. Previously hidden aspects of graffiti culture: complex of motivations for graffiti writing and sense of cultural belonging graffiti can generate for young people, aesthetic practice and criminal activity, practitioners assert visual merit and cultural value. Under-researched issues that render graffiti a difficult problem. Interviews with graffiti writers writing writing every writer. Graffiti also forges connections largely unremarked by those thinking and writing about its occurrence: connects the writer to city through act of writing since it is act which places quite strict demands on writers bodies. Connection illicit writing cant be adequately described in binary terms images, appropriate vs inappropriate placement . (cid:524) purpose, (cid:494)final referent(cid:495: (cid:498)affect as whole, then, is the virtual co-presence of potentials(cid:499)
