https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=A7GqcuXLvZc
All right, Jeremy Firth, what is the symbolism of graffiti? Most of it is tagging. I was here in Forbidden Places, and it’s often coded with obscure fonts or in-group references in public places. Can you talk a bit more about the symbolism of graffiti? So graffiti is definitely a form of, it’s definitely a form of participation that is very low, let’s say on the scale of participation, the sense that it’s a form of participation, which is playing on the idea of the fool or the illicit. It has to do with a jester. It has to do with the idea that, so let’s say you build a, you make a really nice building and you’re like, I’ve got this, right? Look at how powerful we are. Look at how we made this thing, right? It’s, this is the structure that’s holding up our city, right? These are the structures that are making the system work. And then someone, all they need to do is to come with a can of spray paint and go, shh. And what they’re doing, if I think that is, you can’t hold it all together. You can’t keep this clean. You can’t control everything. And so it’s like a challenge to the control of the system. And so the more the system becomes, so graffiti has always existed. You find it in Roman times, you find it in all kinds of moments. But the fact that graffiti becomes almost like a cultural art form can only happen in a world that is extremely controlling and extremely systematic and extremely clean and technical. And so you have these, you have all these structures and then someone comes and just puts their name on there. It’s like, they just tag it. And it’s like, like you said, it’s you’re not even supposed to really read their name. It’s almost like an obscure, you know, an obscure kind of chaotic sign that just shows that the system is in total. So it’s a, and that’s why it’s also like an affirmation of the individual. And so you always, you know, when we talk about individualism, you also have to understand that the individualism is the balance of the tyrannical kind of state system. So the idea of like the rock star that is like an individual and has his own style and the artist that has their own style and you can recognize and you can, you know, you know that it’s that person by the way they look, by the way they dress, by the way they draw, by their art. That’s just a reaction to the other side, which is this extremely kind of mechanical world in which we live. And so you can understand then that in the system that is tyrannical, someone to challenge that will want to assert their individuality. A graffiti artist is something like the punk rocker, right? That doesn’t wanna follow your rules and that will have some idiosyncratic way of dressing in order to kind of call attention to themselves in a world of robots and a world of people that are all the same. And so, but they’re both the same. They’re both two sides of the same coin. And one is, let’s say one brings about the other. And so the graffiti artist will bring about systems of cleaning and systems of control that are even more radical, you know, that’ll force the police to criminalize graffiti because there’s so much of it, or they’ll try to capture it and tame it, you know, then have walls that are just for graffiti artists, that kind of stuff. And so it’s a super interesting thing, especially like the idea of also political commentary challenging the people in power at the time if you think of Banksy or of Jean-Michel Basquiat and how he was also writing these absurdist kind of statements. Yeah, I hope that makes sense. [“The Star-Spangled Banner”]