Why Graffiti?

In a word, because it’s new, transnational, and did the world tour in less than 30 years. Will it continue to grow? Who knows.

What’s an Aussie writer doing in the middle of freakin’ Jersey City, USA?

What’s all to the good is that, despite attempts to co-opt it by the Chelsea Art Industry, graffiti has remained – not pure, no, never pure – on the outside looking it. Yes, there’s the merchandising deals, designers for extreme sports, all that, not to mention hip-hop stylz – as I said, not pure – but graffiti still regenerates itself on the streets – though developers are destroying some of the prime spots in Jersey City. Damn!

I mean, why’s the best stuff hidden away where no one can see it, except other writers? And what’s up with the acceptance of the ephemeral? Sooner or later it's all GONE OVER. Yet this art on walls regenerates itself with a vengeance? It's reptilian, that's what it is.

Urban cave art in the 21st Century: An old Themo in a tunnel in Jersey City.

Evidence: In Grooves, Grafs, and Toons: Transnational Culture Forms I argue for an international youth culture that shares styles and motifs around the globe and that is, at best, in an uneasy truce with cultural forms with roots prior to WWII. In Graffiti Aesthetics 4: The Space of Writing I argue that graffiti’s insistence on the name as its foundational space is fundamentally different from pictorial spaces heretofore (what an archaic word that is!) proposed in art’s history, East and West, North and South. That new space, that’s where we find hope.

Is the line not impossibly elegant?