They replaced it all with grey - The importance of graffiti

No one ever asked the people if they could destroy the forest. No one asked you if they could block the blue sky with grey bricks and blind the stars with lesser lights. So why should you need permission to paint the bland parking lot wall, to reinstate some of the colour stolen from your world.

Those who built these systems should have known this would happen, but that would have required them to see the humanity in others. How could anyone think to remove so much and not have another try to fill the void. The system shut people out of galleries, out of schools, it socially ostracised the notion of art from those less fortunate, those forced in to a corner through racial prejudice and wealth disparity.

The system created a world so monolithic and uncaring that it sat as concrete on the shoulders of the youth, trying to suppress all they are, and abhorrently it expected people to go quietly in to the night, content to have the very notion of their individuality erased and replaced by city blocks and smart suits, a public beauty only approved by a boardroom.

Is it any wonder then that in this world the young and the hungry sought to reclaim their names, their right to art, their right to space, a landscape and identity of their own making. Further more is it any wonder that with so much weight placed upon them the explosive release of that pressure was one of such incredibly vibrance and reach. This desire to be seen, to leave a mark, to make of our lives something more than mundane reality is not new, it arises throughout history in every city where comparisons to this tale plays out, but it is only in the modern age that the tools available and the pressure placed have coincided in such a way to create graffiti as we know it.

"The immortal wall" - HATS

This creation is our reaction to the confrontational and confining nature of a wall we did not build, a barrier, a restriction, squeezing us, the mounting the pressure that rises from our need for autonomy, our need to be seen and to elevate humanity above a blank walls hegemony.

It is the desire to spread the message of us. Us the individual, us the human, the living the thinking the feeling, the explorative and inquisitive, the us that wants to climb higher simply to say we made it. It is ironically the same drive that built those skyscrapers and the parking lots, the same drive that placed this weight upon the earth which other now feel crushed by. It is our autonomy in action and conflict with its past self.

These painted messages are a poetically necessary equal and opposite reaction to those unasked for walls. They are proof of our autonomy, our creative instincts, and our ability to free ourselves from imposed restrictive structures.

They are the physics of culture in action, they are us.

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If you want to learn more about the modern intersection of graffiti and technology I would highly recommend exploring the work of renowned British graffiti artist HATS