Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Oh, heya playas. Near my house is a little deli with the words "Deli-icious" spray painted
on its front gate. It'll forever remain whether this guys food is actually deli-icious but
one thing that is for sure is that if we didn't have graffiti, our society as we know it would
fall. There are several types of graffiti artists but the two I want to talk about are
actual artists and straight up bombers. The difference between the two is that one has
actual consent by the property owner to draw on his piece where as the other one just kinda
does it because he wants to. A bomber tags to leave his mark, often claiming what he
tags to be his territory. So just looking at what the root of the word artist means
it begs us to ask the question which one is the real artist? The truth is graffiti can
be both beautiful and horrendous. But that's just a matter of subjectivity. What isn't
a matter of subjectivity is who owns rights to the land being tagged on. I mean it's obvious
that stores and homes belong to someone but then when we get to areas such as train stations
and parks we claim it belongs to the community. And looking at art over time we can see that
most artists act out of their relative space and they're not limited by only using a canvas.
Technically any surface can be considered a canvas and if it belongs to the community
what's to say I don't have rights to draw on it? Art is expressive. Art is meant to
be free. So why should public and private property be off limits for me to create my
art on? If your answer to that is, well, people pay large sums of money to get tiny little
deeds that say hey this land belongs to me but it begs me to ask the question, can anyone
really own land? Can we really even own anything other than our own bodies? This led me to
question the entire fabric of laws and society. I mean, if a graffiti artist is risking his
life climbing up fire escapes and illegally into train stations, why would he concern
himself with laws? Why not just ignore them? When you go bombing to tag your name, you
know you're doing something illegal so your mindset is not in the state where what can
I do to follow the law, it's what can I do to avoid it? A world in which we would never
be able to safely sleep at night because we'd always have the fear that our neighbors are
gonna break in our house just to steal our food, kill our families and *** our women.
But back to graffiti. Graffiti is a great example of duality in action. Much like a
knife can be used to cut food and stab a person there lies this element of trust and understand
build into our social construct that allows us to feel safe. If I walk into someones home
and see a knife, I won't attack them in fear because I know that it's there to cut food
and not kill me, hopefully. The spray can in ones hands is not an evil tool but it depends
on who's hands it's in that determines the action. Commissioned graffiti is a way for
artists to express themselves without breaking the law. The problem with that is that you're
really limited in your creativity. Street graffiti allows for the utmost freedom. Where
the world is your canvas to draw on. The problem with that is if your community doesn't agree
with what you're drawing on, you're kind of being a ***. In my eyes street graffiti can
be a nuisance but it's a non lethal way to remind us as to why we have laws. And without
laws we wouldn't have things like stop signs, clean drinking water or trusted graffiti artists
to paint deli-icious on the front of your store. Like this video if you agree that artists
should always be allowed to express themselves. Leave a comment letting me know, do you think
street graffiti is art or vandalism? And subscribe to the channel for more philosophical debates
and migraine inducing discussions. As always guys, love and peace. I don't know about you
but graffiti artists should have to do something visibly cool before they tag something. In
Tony Hawk Pro Skater I had to nail that Kickflip MctTwist in order to turn that damn ramp blue.
It was hard work. Whatever yo, deuces.