Unit 1 / Methods of Investigating / Written Response
Mark Ecob, MAGCD1, October 2024
I usually walk past graffiti, or glance at it from a train. I like the way it looks but can’t read it properly. It’s vandalism anyway, right?
In my local skate park, it occupies bins, poles, benches, ramps, fences and walkways. It claims the space. Like the Xerography typical of 1970s New York, also viewed as a form of vandalism, this concrete canvas informs you that you’ve arrived in an urban scene, subculture or active social movement. (Eichhorn, K, 2016). Executed using widely available spray paint and pen, like the low-cost production of photocopied posters, these large areas of graffiti constantly shift as new elements are added over each other in an indiscernible hierarchy.
Whilst similar to the layered structure of the posters that took over construction hoardings on the Lower East Side in the last decades of the 20th century, which clearly spoke for the work of artists, musicians or just regular citizens with a cause (Eichhorn, K, 2016), graffiti can often seem exclusively intended for those who speak its language. Tags, for example, act like a signature and a disguise simultaneously, so that the authorities can’t identify you as a vandal, but your peers can identify with you as an artist.
Bodies of graffiti such as the panels of the skate ramp at my location can act like Pollock-esque pieces of art in themselves within a wider context, but to break down their structure and begin to comprehend their form and meaning, I have learned to see differently.
“You must set about it more slowly, almost stupidly. Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless”
(Perec, G, 1999, p.50).
By slowing down and focussing on the elements in front of me, like Perec I learned to focus on my subject directly and repeatedly. His dissection of the built environment using different written descriptions is mirrored in my use of photography and Adobe photoshop to peel back layers of graffiti and to see how they evolve over time. I too visualised the sedimentary layers of my subject, but instead of a network beneath Paris streets upon a rich Eocene, mine were intersecting and hidden pieces of wall art applied over decades (Perec, G, 1974).
Like a graphic archaeologist, my dissection of the site enabled me to observe a dense, interconnected ecosystem of graphic marks that constantly evolves. After exhaustive categorisation and a quantitative approach, recreating and copying directly from the source allowed me to physically connect with it in a way other methods did not, something I look forward to exploring more.
REFERENCE LIST
Eichhorn, K (2016) Adjusted Margin : Xerography, Art, and Activism in the Late Twentieth Century, MIT Press.
Perec, G ([1974] 1999) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, London: Penguin.