Graffiti Review

Author: T_C

Zines

A Morbid Fascination

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Livor Mortis is a tidy two-tone zine from the UK. The content is based around themes of decay from rundown cityscapes, derelict buildings, to graveyards. Obviously graffiti is a feature and issues 5 and 6 in particular include it almost as a representation of decline. I say almost because on the one hand a tagged up shattered pane of glass positioned alongside dark eery corridors leading to nowhere tips into some sub-genre of graff-horror. But elsewhere murals painted onto the crumbling plaster of tenement blocks signify a more vibrant deterioration of urban areas. A painting of a cat pouring out graffiti from the trumpet it’s playing or an Anarchist hitting back at the cops beating him are signs of life. And there’s humourus additions too with ET’s head on a giraffes body, two human-spiders shagging, or a throw-up across some Granny wallpaper.

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Books

Objects in a Glass Case

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scribbling_through_history

I recently got sent a copy of Scribbling Through History which was released just last year and is one of a whole slew of academic books on graffiti that have been published recently. The cover promises the long view on graffiti stretching back from antiquity to the present. Predictably enough, of twelve chapters, the two that cover modernity focus on the Middle-East and the internet. The rest of the content delves deeper into history where the modern idea of what constitutes graffiti becomes blurred with a greater variety of interpretation. Continue Reading

Zines

Berlin Walls

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The Berliner Mauern zine, the title of which is taken from the graffiti/street-art blog, is now on its third edition. This issue, which came with some extra prints and stickers, is a basic black and white photography zine. The content is a mixture of tags, stencils, paste-ups and street-photography. As I was flicking through the zine I thought about what brings all this content together. Aside from the aesthetic of the zine the focus is on the illegal side of things and, generally, the more awkward stuff. Continue Reading

Interviews

Track & Field Interview

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Track and Field / PE zine

I recently got sent a copy of a magazine called Track & Field. Open mouthed in horror I began to read the introduction; what an earth is a defence of Thatcherism doing in a graff mag I thought to myself?! Well it turns out the short introductory essay on competition actually refers to the sporting rivalry between Steve Ovett and Sebastian Coe in the ‘80s. The determination of these two athletes is used as a metaphor for the struggles of a graffiti writer. Sports fans are invited into the pages of a magazine that aims to “bring a voice to culture that shows no sign of taking a defeat just yet.” The ‘voice’ refers to the index of text, in the back pages, that follows the photography.     Continue Reading

Books

Écrivez partout !

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Delete Elite

Delete Elite by Ben Brohanszky is my new favourite book! Published just last year the title, taken from off the street, is intended as a statement. The book is pitched as a study of ‘conceptual graffiti’. It contains the stuff that doesn’t neatly fit within the street-art/graffiti binary. Instead it is an esoteric meander that takes the reader from the earliest roots of modern graffiti to its contemporary manifestations. From the Provo movement through to Néma this is a tour of wall writing on the boundary of the conventional graffiti movement. The whole book is meticulously referenced and footnoted throughout but also has a casual style which includes line drawings done by the author with his eyes closed. Continue Reading

Books

Framing A Counter-Narrative

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When I first picked up Graffiti Grrlz I thought the book might contain an argument along the lines of how women are excluded from the masculine graffiti subculture. Actually the book’s author, Jessica Pabón-Colón, has written a positive account of female involvement in graffiti. That’s not to say the book paints a completely rosy picture but that it concentrates on how women practice and contribute to graffiti in an empowering way. Pabón-Colón wants her book to weave the “individual stories (of female participation) into a narrative about how they navigate their experiences as a collective within the subculture”. Through this narrative Graffiti Grrlz provides new and original insights into graffiti. The book explores the activities of female writers, based on interviews with the author, and how they ‘perform’ feminism through the graffiti subculture. From Africa to South America, graffiti jams to graffiti collectives, digital social networks and the internet archive there’s a broad range of experiences covered.

Graffiti Grrlz

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Books

(Un)Titled//Titled

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Un(Authorized)//Commissioned

Before I begin this review I have to admit to being the type of ‘non-specialised sceptic’ who Andrea Baldini criticises in the recent Un(Authorized)//Commissioned book. The publication he writes in can be regarded as a curators guide to exhibiting graffiti. This is not a topic that would usually appeal to me so, not being a particular expert nor a lover of art-galleries, I approached the book with mild cynicism. However the book brings up some interesting ideas that are worth discussing and has changed my opinion to some extent. Continue Reading

Interviews

XARPI Book Interview

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XARPI book

I recently got sent an unusual book from Brazil titled XARPI which focuses on the unique tagging culture of Rio de Janeiro. The book’s author, João Marcelo, has produced a brilliant typology of xarpi, the variant of pixação found in his native city. Marcelo is a graphic designer, graduated in Industrial Design in 1998 at the Faculdade da Cidade, who has spent the last eight years dedicated to documenting every corner of Rio where xarpi could be found. As this style of graff is little known on this side of the globe I decided to ask him a bit more about how his project developed, what exactly xarpi is, and how the book came about: Continue Reading

Articles

Is 52 weeks enough? Unsettling archaeology with graffiti recording

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This is a guest post by Dr Alex Hale. Alex is an archaeologist, who works in Scotland. He considers archaeology to be a creative practice that should be far more accessible and part of a democratic process that enables people to understand themselves, each other and our space-time journeys together. Continue Reading