rapid and furious

In the prayer room of a local hospital, a man was caught stealing and otherwise abusing copies of the Quran, Islam’s holy book. Accepting of most viewpoints and bursting with forgiveness, the chaplain in charge of the prayer room finally figured out who had been violating the sanctity of the sacred spaces in his care. Instead of having the offender arrested for the hate crimes he’d been committing, however, the chaplain merely alerted hospital security, who in turn approached the offender and gave him a stern warning, whereupon he pledged to cease his hateful, criminal assault. The man claimed he had been desecrating the translations of the Quran out of concern for the spiritual safety of his Christian neighbors. In his mind, it appears, the Muslim teachings promote only death and hatred - leaving no room for celebration, compassion, or love.

Imagine for a moment that this scenario had played out the other way around, that a non-Christian had been entering local chapels to steal, ruin, and similarly abuse the Christian holy books stored therein. Imagine he claimed he was doing it to protect the minds of children from the influence of Yahweh, the Christian god, who orders his followers to kill homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13); to murder people who work on Saturday, the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14); and to end the lives of those who don’t believe in him (2 Chronicles 15:12-13). Oh, how swift would be his likely judgement, how brutal the townspeople's reaction. Such an offender would probably rot in jail for months until he faced a hostile judge and jury; then, he’d go back to jail for the maximum period of time allowed by law.

Why did hospital security not take steps to prosecute the Christian who was abusing Qurans? Why did they not do everything in their power to protect the persons working in or visiting the hospital from the openly violent ways of a religious extremist? To this author’s eye, it seems that the original offender was given a pass because he was a Christian who chose to abuse the Muslim holy book. If this scenario had played out any differently, the outcome would have been one of rapid and furious action in the pursuit of justice. The area in which these hate crimes occurred is predominantly Christian; it is therefore not surprising that a person who would act in the manner of a Christian terrorist should receive not his due punishment but a mere slap on the wrist. When justice is kept blind, mankind has the chance to achieve greatness; when those who deserve her wrath are instead allowed to roam free, their minds poisoned by prejudice and hatred, the human race is doomed to wallow in fear-soaked failure.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on the SDUBS codex

Street artists have a method, yet they have no known method; they follow a code, yet they follow no known code. There is a rule and a measure to the business of graffiti, a codex of unwritten, non-binding, and unspoken rules that are themselves constantly in flux, and always changing. As it would be foolish to attempt to capture these rules or to try to fix them in ink and in time, and as few who dare write about them live to tell the tale (let alone receive any sort of respect from their peers), let us examine a few of the more apparent entries in the SDUBS codex, or the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialist's rulebook.

To celebrate the glories of socialism, the SDUBS applies her artwork primarily to public property such as street signs, USPS mail boxes, pavement, asphalt, utility poles, subway and light-rail cars, city buses, and to any otherwise unadorned surface located in or on local, state, or federal government buildings. (Graffiti will find its way onto privately-owned property, but if it does, it more than likely belongs on whatever boring and otherwise unadorned surface the vandal decided to deface.) Since she cannot hope to please all persons who might cast eyes upon her labors, the SDUBS works to satisfy her own artistic sensitivities and not those of anyone else. As her work is constantly exposed to external and internal criticism, she allows her natural abilities to flourish ceaselessly, and strives to make her artwork more vibrant, more colorful, less oppressive, more daring, less confusing, and more dastardly than all the rest; it is her goal to criticize those things as she sees wrong with the society in which she lives. Driven by a righteous purity that even she cannot quite explain, she is always on the move seeking out virgin surfaces upon which to display her talents. A creature of deep serenity and pervasive inner calm, she goes about the business of graffiti accompanied only by her own steadfast conviction, never hesitating in the application of her work, never fearful of the potential consequences of her actions, never glancing about to see who might be looking at her; she is a seasoned operator who cares about little but the task at hand. She does not linger near the applied work, nor does she deviate from her course any longer than it might take to stick up her dearly departed piece. And, finally, she experiments with any and every conceivable style of artwork creation and application until she has found the mixture that suits her best: Hereby, she avoids frustration, plays to her greatest strengths, and stagnates neither in style nor in daring.

The author hopes that this brief but poorly-worded and insufficiently-researched list might help the uninitiated to gain a better understanding of street art, of the street artist, and of the goals and aspirations of these strange and wonderful persons. To the night-crawling, alley-lurking, pride-swallowing, risk-taking SDUBS of the world: May your pens not leak, your nozzles never clog, and your hearts stay free of pride and malice. Mahalo, friends, mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

a g o t

  For a city to destroy and deface all graffiti other than pieces done by Banksy is similar to it removing from its museums all paintings other than those done by Michelangelo, and burning them.


Spes Mea In Ratio Est - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp