“Aren’t you cool, you can scribble illegibly on toilet walls”
..it is important to recognise that there is an element of authorial intent to address. It may be argued that the design of the tag is not intended to be accessible to those outside of the subculture, or unknowledgeable of the (sub)cultural aesthetics.
...Regardless of whether the tag was designed to be accessible, the aggressive delivery of it as a text – its placement on a public surface – renders it a public work to some extent, and to an extent it demands an engagement or response from the public to which it is presented.
...The tag on the toilet door aggressively exposes the gap between representation and the represented. But there is a further gap, a second level or derivative gap, in this text also. The tag is representative of the presence of the tagger (the tag necessarily recalls the persistence and resistance of the tagger). The tag represents artistic freedom, rebellion, anti-censorship, style, transgression of surveillance, and transgressive use of public space among other things.
ceci n'est pas un mot
..However, where are we left when a particular style of painting continually produces text, and the style or genre of painting is comprised of text that ‘we’ cannot read? Does the relation between the painting and its title collapse in graffiti when the untitled painting can be considered the title itself?
...Finally, it might be important to consider further the element of re-iteration that is central to the phenomenon of tagging. There is an element to tagging in which the tagger seeks maximum exposure by marking surfaces as prolifically as possible, tagging as frequently as possible within particular geographic and spatial zones. The self-similarity of the re-iterations of a particular tag could make it recognisable or readable to readers of the artist’s work although it is first read as ‘illegible’. This can be the case even if the reader never manages to decipher the word that is the formal subject of the art.
Toby Ganley
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0401/08-ganley.php
No comments:
Post a Comment