ought to offend

If not down an alley then stuck up a pole is where most graffiti will badger and troll unwary onlookers who can’t help but glance at something toward which they’ll then take a stance. Oh gourd! they cry loudly when they spy a sticker or a sprayed-on piece and then proceed to bicker about if it is or it is not true art (this has been discussed since mankind got its start). One faction will argue to tear the piece down the other will say that such acts are unfounded - that stifling expression harms all of our race just like a swift kick to a suckerpunched face. Images and words are offensive to some as are crude depictions of women or guns; some others however find fault with a lot and refuse to give modern things a fair shot; some others meanwhile give just zero fucks about ‘sacrilegious’ or similar truck - they do as they please knowing that neighbors tend to choose what’s OK and what ought to offend. Onward then, graffitos - city-walls await! There’s no telling what could tonight be your fate! Make pretty the surfaces others ignore - your fanbase is massive and yearning for more.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

eyes in graffiti

Walk through Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Berlin, Amsterdam, or Bangkok, and look in the forgotten, in the grimy, and in the underused places. With a keen glance and a bit of luck, you will witness the riotous beauty known as graffiti. Oh, what a profusion it is of style and color, of shape and size, of message and image, all blending into a whole that, if viewed from afar, resembles little more than clutter. Step closer, however, and trust your peripheral vision, and your most tender of sphincters will drink gladly of the intoxicating power of street art. Why, though, do we look? Why are we powerless against the urge to sweep our gazes down into worn and sticky curbs and up onto soot-stained poles? Eyes, my friends, we look at graffiti because it is full of eyes (and not just any eyes, but human eyes). They may have stumbled upon the technique accidentally, they may have copied it from advertisers, but, for whatever reason, graffitos exploit one of mankind's primal and deep-seated fears, using a time-proven method for getting people to look at something – giving it eyes.

Since our time as forest-creeping, prairie-running, skull-bashing troglodytes, the species homo sapiens has developed the uncanny ability to recognize the shape of the eye even if it should be obscured by layers of random patterns. Experts argue whether this ability is restricted merely to recognizing human eyes or if it applies to those of our former predators (i.e. bear, cougar, coyote), but I hazard that our subconscious brains are constantly trying to figuring out if someone, or something, is looking at us. Advertisers exploit this evolutionary adaptation to our status as Top Predator Of One Another by blanketing the asphalt landscape – the phaltscape – with pictures of pretty people who nearly all happened to have been staring directly at the camera's shutter when it opened. (Now, however, instead of our powers giving us the upper hand in a fight-or-flight situation, they allow us to be convinced that we need that new and re-formulated cucumber body scrub. Woe be unto mankind.)

All quasi-scientific, pseudo-evolutionary nonsense aside, why do graffiti-writers use eyes in their designs? Why does they want people to look at their works of art? Few graffitos apply their craft for financial gain; as with other labors of love, people cipher-write regardless of the risks it poses to life, limb, liberty, and liability. SDUBS (Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists) are wily and suspicious by nature; they maintain a level of honor, decorum, and discipline so profound as to make inquiry into their personal matters a life-threatening endeavor; therefore, these questions shall likely go unanswered for generations to come. For now, however, please enjoy the street-side galleries of free-to-the-consumer art wherever you may be, and rest easily in the knowledge that, by looking back at eyes that look at you, you are merely executing a deeply-ingrained survival reflex that is as natural to humans as is laughter. Never forget, however, to keep an eye out for mankind's oldest enemy – itself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on graffitos' patroness

For all of their differences in style of clothing, method of address, performance under fire, gait while walking, and ability to tolerate bullshit, street artists share one thing in common: a life-long love for the dandelion (and for kicking off their white, fluffy, puff-ball-like heads). As an individual who spends his time altering the appearance of things that everyone else seems to be ignoring, the graffiti-writer will – should the opportunity present itself – run wildly into a field of dandelions just to decapitate as many of them as he can, as quickly as possible. The dandelion requires just this sort of action to deliver her seeds to the Shifting Winds of Fortune; she gains of the graffito's destructive tendencies; thus, she is his goddess, his flower-patroness.

Beyond the symbiotic interdependency of dandelion with graffito, the two also share other traits, albeit ones perhaps less obvious to the casual observer. Both are loathed by the population in general, the flower for its tendency to grow nearly anywhere regardless of efforts to keep it out, the artist for his tendency to access most any imaginable surface – regardless of perimeter fencing, guard, closed-circuit television camera, or watchdog. Both are loved by a small but growing group that keeps its opinions to itself and enjoys beauty wherever beauty should arise. Dandelions grow in neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (gutters, trash heaps, empty lots) where little else can gain foothold; street art is applied to neglected, contaminated, and otherwise ignored places (alleyways, abandoned buildings, concrete highway embankments) where few people venture. Cities hire squads of individuals, outfit them with brushes and paint-buckets, and send them out to paint over great patches of well-executed works of art, thus providing the graffito with fresh canvas upon which to erect new works and encouraging him to pursue his Happiness upon surfaces always harder and as a rule more dangerous to reach. Cities treat the dandelion similarly: it is sprayed with poison, assaulted with shovels, dug under the soil, weeded, treated, and burned, all to little avail - a cheerful and resilient little blossom, it will re-appear during the next growing season in larger numbers and with deeper and more tenacious roots.

It is as hard to catch a vandal in the act of applying his craft as it is to catch a dandelion in the act of colonizing new terrain. Both street art and dandelions improve the human condition freely and without ado, bringing beauty to the world without seeking thanks or a by-your-leave. Street art covers and enlivens surfaces that just a day before had been blank concrete walls, and dandelions appear just as suddenly, shining yellow faces enlivening lawns that just a day before had been mono-cultured swaths of grass devoid of Nature's abundance. We, the Self Directed Urban Beautification Specialists (SDUBS) of America, ask the inhabitants of Terra to search for beauty in all places, to pursue Happiness with us by blanketing the urban and the natural environments with bright and vibrant colors, to rejoice in the sudden appearance of beauty in places forgotten and forlorn, and to remember to honor our common goddess, the dandelion, by kicking as many of her puff-balls as we possible can. Stay on your toes out there, dear friend, and may you be filled always with divine breath.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit