The Site of Graffiti: Linked Poetry and Mu’en

Graffiti expresses the kami of the site where it is situated

I take it from my post, Living Graffiti, that the site of graffiti is the focus of our, or at least my, investigation. But the site is to be understood, not as a mere physical place. It IS that, but the physical place is to be understood, perhaps, provisionally, as a resource accessed by the graffiti, and thus by the graffiti writer. The site is a confluence of physical, social, and aesthetic energy.

In order further to understand this, a little comparative investigation is called for. And for that we turn to—where else?—but to Japan and Buddhism. Not directly, but as interpreted through Eiko Ikegami’s wonderful book, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture (Cambridge 2005). We start with linked verse, a form of collective, public poetry practiced in the 13th century (and later):

The atmosphere of a Cherry Blossom session was intensely moving for its participants. The typical number of seats poets in a za session was not fixed but usually stood at around 10. Unlike the more formal linked-verse meetings of later periods, however, members of the audience that surrounded a circle of poets in a Cherry Blossom session were free to contribute poems of the own to the circle. After one sequence of chain poems was made by seated members in the circle, the floor was open to the public. All the participants in the meeting would avidly search for the best follow-up verse, one after the other, Sometimes, dozens of poems were thrown in from the audience to provide the next stanza in a particularly difficult chain. When an unexpectedly interesting succeeding stanza was presented, the perceptive participants would be captivated by feelings of surprised exhilaration.

In other words, we be jammin’.

Now check this out, it’s from Roger Gastman & Caleb Neelon, The History of American Graffiti (Harper 2010); they’re quoting TDEE, a Jersey City writer talking about the Jersey City Wall of Fame, as it’s sometimes known (p. 276):

All of sudden, already seasoned writers like TECK, SERO, SNOW, and the QMB CREW started rocking ‘our’ walls, to where soon you could go up there on any given Sunday during the summers of 1991 to 1993 and find at least ten people painting, and twenty more just hanging out. . . . The Newport Wall was the first time writers from different New Jersey cities got together on the regular and had a place to meet and paint as a collective.

Times have changed, but the Newport Wall’s still there, only three blocks from the Holland Tunnel and thus within earshot of thousands of cars a day, though it’s been neglected of late and part of the wall’s covered with dirt, dirt thrown there as part of preparations for erecting apartment buildings that have not yet happened.

Graffiti in the Mist: JC Wall of Fame

JC Wall of Fame

Jersey City’s Wall of Fame is about half a mile from the western end of the Holland Tunnel. It’s a block long, stretching from Coles St. to Jersey Avenue between 10th and, well 12th, since 11th no longer exists. You can’t see it from the street because it’s up on an embankment. Fifty years ago there were railroad tracks and a freight station on the embankment, but those are gone. This particular block is slated to have apartment buildings on it, but the stagnant economy as put those plans on hold.

Because the wall is hidden from the street, it is ideal for graffiti writers, who paint for one another, not for members of the general public, some of whom would surely complain to the authorities and they, in turn, would have the wall “buffed” (that is, be painted over). Also, because the walls are semi-hidden (they’re visible to people living in the upper stories of nearby apartment buildings), the writers can work without fear of interruption.

This is by Jersey Joe, who also writes as Rime and who has (or had, some have been painted over) two or three other pieces on or near the wall. He has a world-wide reputation and, in fact, makes a living as a graffiti writer. But he still does “illegals” in addition to his legit work so as to keep up his street cred.

This is in a style that’s distinctly different from anything else on the wall. It’s one of several pieces by a crew from the UK – notice the “UK” to the right. Notice, as well, that fragments of older graffiti are visible around the edges of this piece.

This is one of several pieces that was done on a black background. Sometimes, but not always (see the previous photo), a crew of writers will paint the surface a single color in order to completely cover-over older graffiti on the surface. Notice the dirt and junk piled in from of this piece. Site preparation work had begun for an apartment complex before the bottom dropped out of the economy. As a result a lot of perfectly fine graffiti was damaged or destroyed for no good reason.

This is by Taboo, a writer with Brooklyn’s DYM crew. As far as I know this piece is still up, though it’s been well over a year since I’ve been up on the embankment.