# Internet, graffiti removal and strategies to fight graffiti 2.0



## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

AltinD said:


> WTF?! :nuts:
> 
> It is you and your fellow vandal ''artists'' that are doing that on daily basis. :lol:


The aesthetics of graffiti are created, or else effectively endorsed, by the people who live in those communities. _Your_ aesthetic is imposed upon a city by corrupt city mayors and their veritable army of armed policemen _against the will_ of the residents of the neighborhoods in question.

Until you understand that, you will never grasp this issue in the slightest.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ So do you honestly think the majority of train users in any major city approve tagging, scratching etc. of trains?


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

*A brief overview of the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia*



> *Mural Arts Program*
> 
> The Mural Arts Program began in 1984 as a component of the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network, an effort spearheaded by then Mayor Wilson Goode to eradicate the graffiti crisis plaguing the city. The Anti-Graffiti Network hired muralist Jane Golden to reach out to graffiti writers and to redirect their energies from destructive graffiti writing to constructive mural painting.
> 
> ...



Philadelphia Mural by Hywel Owen, on Flickr


Philadelphia mural, Mario Lanza by lacafferata, on Flickr


Philadelphia Murals by DanielleJPhotography, on Flickr


Philadelphia Murals by DanielleJPhotography, on Flickr


Philadelphia Mural Arts by Philadeldog, on Flickr


Philadelphia Mural Arts Program by theskepticaloptimist, on Flickr


Mural by odhusky, on Flickr


Mural, Philadelphia Pennsylvania by hanneorla, on Flickr


Mural, Philadelphia Pennsylvania by hanneorla, on Flickr


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ That idea is just appeasing criminals. Like giving violent assailants paintball guns so they can release their violence in a safe way or something.


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ That idea is just appeasing criminals. Like giving violent assailants paintball guns so they can release their violence in a safe way or something.


Well it's legal, the building owners actually like having the murals, and they have become a city landmark in their own right.

Anyways regarding your opinion on the matter, no one (including the building owners and the city of Philadelphia) gives a sh*t. :cheers:


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ That idea is just appeasing criminals. Like giving violent assailants paintball guns so they can release their violence in a safe way or something.


lol


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

kaligraffi said:


> The aesthetics of graffiti are created, or else effectively endorsed, by the people who live in those communities. _Your_ aesthetic is imposed upon a city by corrupt city mayors and their veritable army of armed policemen _against the will_ of the residents of the neighborhoods in question.
> 
> Until you understand that, you will never grasp this issue in the slightest.


Untill you don't gasp the concept that what does not belong to you is not for up to you to change the apparence, you deserve to be "bagged and taged" by those "corrupt" organisations ... and rightfully so.


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## AltinD (Jul 15, 2004)

diablo234 said:


> Well it's legal, the building owners actually like having the murals ....


And that's how it has to be done, not leave it up to vandal punks. :yes:


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

kaligraffi said:


> The aesthetics of graffiti are created, or else effectively endorsed, by the people who live in those communities. Your aesthetic is imposed upon a city by corrupt city mayors and their veritable army of armed policemen against the will of the residents of the neighborhoods in question.
> 
> Until you understand that, you will never grasp this issue in the slightest.


Actually I don't think that is the case. That aesthetic is decided by individuals in that community who don't normally ask the opinions of others in that community. Just because those others don't have time to scrub the walls and trains clean or are scared to do so can't be taken as endorsement,

I'm not against giving space to artists to express themselves in the public arena but that's not what most graffiti is about and even the good artists have no right to simply decide on behalf of the whole community which surfaces they are using.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

diablo234 said:


> Well it's legal, the building owners actually like having the murals


If the buildings' owners (not tenants let alone squatters of an abandoned structure) allow graffiti on their free will (not like blackmailed because the graffiti crew is friends with the local gang), then I think it is not a problem.

But that is definitively not the case of most graffiti.


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## diablo234 (Aug 18, 2008)

Suburbanist said:


> If the buildings' owners (not tenants let alone squatters of an abandoned structure) allow graffiti on their free will (not like blackmailed because the graffiti crew is friends with the local gang), then I think it is not a problem.
> 
> But that is definitively not the case of most graffiti.


I agree, I just posted those earlier photos just to prove that not all "street art" is bad per say.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ So do you honestly think the majority of train users in any major city approve tagging, scratching etc. of trains?


My contention is that most users are not significantly opposed to it. The burden of proof is on you if you want to argue that they, in fact, do.

But look at this thread. Building owners are going out of their way, and paying out of their own pockets to get graffiti artists to *beautify *and *improve *their buildings. When faced with this, you retreat to laughably inane mumblings and abandon all your prior rationales (if we are charitable enough to extend the label to your non-arguments) with great haste and, as always, no shame. You do so thusly:



> That idea is just appeasing criminals. Like giving violent assailants paintball guns so they can release their violence in a safe way or something.


More childish nonsense. It is fully legal and it hurts no one (which automatically disqualifies your clumsy attempt at a comparison, par for the course from you) and yet you still oppose it. Why? Well, because it's not about the law, it's about your hatred of cities, graffiti being an art so intertwined with the modern urban environment.

Thanks again for showing us how you don't care about the law at all, and simply use that cheap legalism of yours to create a thin veneer of respectability where in fact none exists.



AltinD said:


> Untill you don't gasp the concept that what does not belong to you is not for up to you to change the apparence, you deserve to be "bagged and taged" by those "corrupt" organisations ... and rightfully so.


A characteristically incomprehensible sentiment from a habitually incomprehensible position. Not only does this ignore my last comment, it additionally follows along the same line of illogic that has already been exposed for the sham that it is. To wit: it is up to the members of a community to decide the appearance of their neighborhood, and it is *not* something to be dictated by you or the corrupt mayors whom you blindly shower with cross-eyed praise. The most voracious opponents of graffiti do not live in the areas in question, and thanks to the self-condemning nonsense peddled by Suburbanist, this is a phenomenon we can so easily observe in this very thread: Suburbanist deeply despises the Bronx and openly wishes for its complete destruction, and yet absurdly thinks of him/herself as the dictator of all the walls of this same borough. It just goes to show how empty and asinine the position truly is.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Jonesy55 said:


> Actually I don't think that is the case. That aesthetic is decided by individuals in that community who don't normally ask the opinions of others in that community. Just because those others don't have time to scrub the walls and trains clean or are scared to do so can't be taken as endorsement,
> 
> I'm not against giving space to artists to express themselves in the public arena but that's not what most graffiti is about and even the good artists have no right to simply decide on behalf of the whole community which surfaces they are using.


Your point is well-taken, but I think that there is a correlation to be noted: street artists, almost without exception, would rather do their work on legal walls so long as there are enough of them and in reasonably visible places (and even if that isn't the case, a lot of them would prefer legal walls anyway). If a city refuses to provide adequate amounts of legal walls then street artists are left with no choice but to beautify their city without permission. A flexible, reasonable response from city authorities is what is needed, and I think most graffiti artists recognize and respect one when they see it.

On another note, I would dispute the idea that neighborhoods live in fear of graffiti artists. Unless they're gang taggers (which is objectively an entirely different subject), most graffiti artists pose virtually zero physical threat to anyone. Just to show a comparison, many in American cities are justifiably afraid of policemen, and yet they are neither too busy nor too afraid to march against police brutality. If those communities wanted to get rid of graffiti, they are certainly capable of making this wish known; they do not, and so we can safely assume that no such wish holds sway.


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## svicious22 (Nov 16, 2011)

Taggers and illegal graffiti artists (I use that term "artist" loosely) should be criminally prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law-they are parasites that do nothing to beautify and much more frequently cause mass ugliness and criminal damage. 

Such attention whores that must leave their mark all over a territory like a dog are obviously depraved and without societal value. Attempts to rationalize this behavior are laughable. 

Legal public art spaces are fine in moderation, as for anything illegal, the hell with the perpetrators of such crimes, they can be imprisoned for life for all I care.


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## Rev Stickleback (Jun 23, 2009)

kaligraffi said:


> My contention is that most users are not significantly opposed to it. The burden of proof is on you if you want to argue that they, in fact, do.


That's wrong. It was your suggestion that the people who live there like the graffiti.

The burden of proof is on you to provide something to back that statement up.


I could say, for example, that people who like graffiti are likely to have small genitalia. The fact that you can't prove the statement wrong doesn't mean I'm likely to be right.



Overall though, topics like this will get nowhere without an admission that "graffiti art" and "graffiti" are two entirely different things. 

Tagging, and writing in the urban graffiti style, are not the same thing as artistic murals. The latter can certainly brighten a district up. The former never can.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Rev Stickleback said:


> That's wrong. It was your suggestion that the people who live there like the graffiti.
> 
> The burden of proof is on you to provide something to back that statement up.


OK, this could be interesting enough to explore. There seem to be a dearth of opinion polls on the subject (probably because the powers that be don't care about what those living in such neighborhoods think), but I found some sources that could help us gauge how graffiti is seen. Here is an article that mentions how a graffiti work received approval by over 90% of local respondents. Here is an informal opinion poll on an Irish news site, which shows a distinct minority see graffiti solely as "outright vandalism" (17%). The rest echo your thoughts, saying that it can be art but some of it isn't.



> Overall though, topics like this will get nowhere without an admission that "graffiti art" and "graffiti" are two entirely different things.
> 
> Tagging, and writing in the urban graffiti style, are not the same thing as artistic murals. The latter can certainly brighten a district up. The former never can.


I quite agree with this, actually. I would only add that a very intricate and nicely-done tag can be very artistic and an improvement over what was there before.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ If you want to be taken marginally seriously, don't cite Internet anonymous non-structured polls, let alone what you read on commentary boxes of news sites, as reliable sources to your overreaching assumption (people love graffiti).


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ If you want to be taken marginally seriously, don't cite Internet anonymous non-structured polls, let alone what you read on commentary boxes of news sites, as reliable sources to your overreaching assumption (people love graffiti).


What I said:

_ My contention is that most users are not significantly opposed to it._

You are the one who hasn't provided anything to the contrary, probably because you're an intellectually bankrupt urbanophobe.

And if you took the time to read my first link, you'd see that it isn't an "Internet anonymous non-structured poll", rather one aimed at a specific demographic. Even beyond this, I pointed out that there seems to be a glaring dearth of exhaustive surveys on this subject, which is why I brought up those two links as a way to further the conversation and spark some critical thought...two things you are clearly incapable of doing.

Finally, what have you advanced that would compel anyone with two brain cells to rub together to take you seriously? Oh, that's right, nothing. :lol:


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ Yeah, name-calling and "you don't belong here" are worn out actions that don't even bother me anymore.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> Yeah, name-calling and "you don't belong here" are worn out actions that don't even bother me anymore.


Name-calling, that is the vapid name-calling of entire city populations, is the solitary basis of your entire worldview.

Feign offense or don't, the fact remains that all your arguments on this thread have been exposed as hollow and false. Trying to portray yourself as the victim _after dishonestly misrepresenting_ the intent of my post only shows how little you have to contribute.


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## Hut_17 (Nov 9, 2011)

Julian Beever


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

Suburbanist said:


> Because street art rely on PRIVATE property or PUBLIC space and is IMPOSED upon those who loath, mock and hate it.
> 
> I can turn my radio or TV off if I don't want to listen to some music or watch a show, and that doesn't interfere with my life experience.
> 
> ...


Great, and if you don't like graffiti you can just kill yourself now and save us, on this forum, the hassle of having to read your bullshit, and even more so, those around you who have to put up with your shit in real life.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Dimethyltryptamine said:


> Great, and if you don't like graffiti you can just kill yourself now and save us


No need for this personal attack.


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

oh the need was there. i feel much better now. just serving you a slice of an irrational argument - something you do so well.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Dimethyltryptamine said:


> oh the need was there. i feel much better now. just serving you a slice of an irrational argument - something you do so well.


I never curse or attack individual forumers and think people should respect my person. I only focus on attacking ideas and mindsets.


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

Well it wasn't really an attack, though. I basically suggested that if you don't like graffiti (legal or illegal) you should kill yourself, which in turn would save all of us from having to read your bullshit (which, imo, is 100x worse than seeing pretty pictures up the sides of buildings - and often times, make more sense)

I still stand by what I said too, seeing as you loosely likened the legalisation of graffiti to rapists, murderers and slave trade. :nuts:

Fact is your bigoted/xenophobic views are hilarious and I'm enjoying mucking around with you. 

Enjoy your 'normal' neighbourhood, full of 'normal people'... (I _wonder_ what you meant be 'normal' too... :dunno


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## svicious22 (Nov 16, 2011)

Well as long as we're being honest, any illegal graffiti artists or taggers who happened to die while in the act of spreading their garbage, such as falling off a roof, being run over by a subway or being shot by a property owner, would frankly make my day. They are immoral scum and I have no use for them.


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## Dimethyltryptamine (Aug 22, 2009)

:applause:


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## Rev Stickleback (Jun 23, 2009)

kaligraffi said:


> It's an invalid query...you're trying to associate causes and effects that have nothing to do with graffiti with graffiti.


whether they paint something artistic or something horrible, the common theme is the complete disregard for other people's property.



> If they were in support of a work of graffiti, then why does in invalidate that claim?


mainly because there was no such claim.



> In some cities, this is actually a less accurate judgment than you might think. But regardless, most artforms are precisely the same way: good stuff is outnumbered by inferior stuff. I see no reason why we could expect let alone demand any different from street art.


..because most graffiti isn't art. It isn't even poor quality art. It's just a horrendous mess.


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## Manila-X (Jul 28, 2005)

BKK is becoming popular to "farang" tourists who love to leave their mark!


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## anak_mm (Apr 8, 2011)

Dimethyltryptamine said:


> Well it wasn't really an attack, though. I basically suggested that if you don't like graffiti (legal or illegal) you should kill yourself, which in turn would save all of us from having to read your bullshit (which, imo, is 100x worse than seeing pretty pictures up the sides of buildings - and often times, make more sense)
> 
> I still stand by what I said too, seeing as you loosely likened the legalisation of graffiti to rapists, murderers and slave trade. :nuts:
> 
> ...



:lol:
+1

___



Rev Stickleback said:


> ..because most graffiti *isn't art*. It isn't even poor quality art. It's just a horrendous mess.


but thats only your opinion not fact at all

who has the right to define what is art? putting definition/limits/rules of what should & should not be art totally defeats the purpose...


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

anak_mm said:


> who has the right to define what is art? putting definition/limits/rules of what should & should not be art totally defeats the purpose...


which is why I'm only concerned with the rights of property owners to decide whether they want anything (art or not - irrelevant) stuck on their façade/wall


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## SydneyCity (Nov 14, 2010)

Suburbanist's not crazy, his mother had him tested


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## bayviews (Mar 3, 2006)

diablo234 said:


> Some grafitti in the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas.




Some graffitti makes for good artwork. 

But IMO stuff like this goes way too far.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Rev Stickleback said:


> whether they paint something artistic or something horrible, the common theme is the complete disregard for other people's property.


The property owners have a complete disregard for other people's community. Graffiti artists improve their community, the property owners in question do not.



> mainly because there was no such claim.


How do you figure?



> ..because most graffiti isn't art. It isn't even poor quality art. It's just a horrendous mess.


That is false on its face. Graffiti is obviously art by any rational standard, only someone with an axe to grind would deny that.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> which is why I'm only concerned with the rights of property owners to decide whether they want anything (art or not - irrelevant) stuck on their façade/wall


It's nice that you admit that you're only concerned with people who probably have very little to do with the community in question. Your cavalier disregard for the quality of life of the majority of people is at least honest in its callous misanthropy...even if it's entirely unjustified to the point of base absurdity.


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## svicious22 (Nov 16, 2011)

kaligraffi said:


> It's nice that you admit that you're only concerned with people who probably have very little to do with the community in question. Your cavalier disregard for the quality of life of the majority of people is at least honest in its callous misanthropy...even if it's entirely unjustified to the point of base absurdity.


This is a patently false statement made by someone with a skewed mind who is a sociopath masquerading as artist. Your infantile piss staining of the world through spray painted "art" is a paragon of societal disregard.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

kaligraffi said:


> Graffiti artists improve their community, the property owners in question do not.


That is a completely subjective statement.


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## ranny fash (Apr 24, 2005)

svicious22 said:


> Well as long as we're being honest, any illegal graffiti artists or taggers who happened to die while in the act of spreading their garbage, such as falling off a roof, being run over by a subway or being shot by a property owner, would frankly make my day. They are immoral scum and I have no use for them.


lol @ you pal. dear me


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## ranny fash (Apr 24, 2005)

svicious22 said:


> This is a patently false statement made by http://blog.iso50.com/27020/atelier-olschinsky-studio/. Your infantile piss staining of the world through spray painted "art" is a paragon of societal disregard.


:lol:some people only see the world through their own eyes lol.

I'm opening an exhibition on tues which will have some quality graf in it. I'll tell my mates and all their arty mates they are ''mentally skewed sociopaths'' then. And to take their ''infantile piss stains'' away. LOL! You are one classic idiot pal!

Do you like art? What, pray tell, do you like? Please inform the world as you appear to have clearly defined the thresholds more competently than the rest of us. Perhaps you would like to offer your opinion on music, poetry? I'm sure you would. Go on son


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## ranny fash (Apr 24, 2005)

In fact I apologise for those last 2 posts.....seems I got sucked into the bitchy arrogant opinionated twatfest that this website has become. Hence why I haven't bothered visiting much for the last 3-4 years. 

Sorry graffiti-hating order-lovers. An awful lot of reasonable people disagree with your opinions on the subject in such a fundamental way that I don't think there is any way we could ever satisfactorily communicate our ideas to each other using any form of written or spoken language. Spray cans it is, then...


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## Rev Stickleback (Jun 23, 2009)

kaligraffi said:


> The property owners have a complete disregard for other people's community. Graffiti artists improve their community, the property owners in question do not.


That's the biggest pile of horsecrap I've read for years.

It's fine to have an opinion on something, but there comes a point with some people where there own bias blinds them to anything resembling rational thought, and that burst through it at 100 mph.

I mean, I spent much of yesterday looking round the historic Georgian centre of Bath. Taking your lead, I'm thinking of writing to UNESCO to get them to add much needed graffiti to the buildings. It'd improve them no end.



> How do you figure?


Because contrary to your claim, the report didn't show that people supported graffiti.



> That is false on its face. Graffiti is obviously art by any rational standard, only someone with an axe to grind would deny that.


OK, the overwhelming majority of stuff sprayed on walls isn't art. It's a hideous mess that makes areas it infests look like an urban ghetto. 


If your definition of graffiti only includes the tiny percent that most would recognise as artistic, then you are creating your own self-fulfilling definition which will always be true.

You might as well say Michael McIntyre is hilarious, if you only count the few jokes that make you laugh as really being jokes.


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## ranny fash (Apr 24, 2005)

Rev Stickleback said:


> You might as well say Michael McIntyre is hilarious, if you only count the few jokes that make you laugh as really being jokes.


How dare you compare graff to Michael McIntyre. :lol:hno:

He is shite


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## Rev Stickleback (Jun 23, 2009)

ranny fash said:


> How dare you compare graff to Michael McIntyre. :lol:hno:
> 
> He is shite


Remarkably he's still more liked than graffiti. In reality*, if forced to choose between a Michael McIntyre street performance, or have their street covered in graffiti, few would choose the graffiti option.

That's kind of how unpopular graffiti is.

* given the choice many would probably choose to have their eyeballs scoured with steel wool rather than have to watch Michael McIntyre, but that's by the by.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Rev Stickleback said:


> That's the biggest pile of horsecrap I've read for years.
> 
> It's fine to have an opinion on something, but there comes a point with some people where there own bias blinds them to anything resembling rational thought, and that burst through it at 100 mph.
> 
> I mean, I spent much of yesterday looking round the historic Georgian centre of Bath. Taking your lead, I'm thinking of writing to UNESCO to get them to add much needed graffiti to the buildings. It'd improve them no end.


Bath is a city of fine architecture, carefully crafted facades and humane scale...and you want to compare that to a concrete overpass? I respect that you disagree but a bit of perspective is necessary here (and perhaps I haven't been too clear on this point, which is my own shortcoming): Bath doesn't have much graffiti because the people the live there and visit there happen to like the way it looks, and with good reason, it's full of architectural triumphs. Residents of south Bronx, however, do not share this reason for satisfaction, and so there is an impetus to alter its appearance with color and visual form.

At the risk of sounding too polemic, _being determines consciousness_, and so I think the matter here is quite local. I was in Zagreb which has tons and tons of legal walls with very interesting graffiti (on the roadside walls leading away from the train station, IIRC), and yet if you go to the old town you'll be hard-pressed to find a lot of it. Why? Well, I cannot say for certain but I suspect that the old town is seen as attractive and so few see the need to put graffiti there.

In other words, graffiti is what happens when humans find themselves in an inhumane urban fabric.



> Because contrary to your claim, the report didn't show that people supported graffiti.


I posted a few sources that seem to suggest that they do, though perhaps you see the statistics or their value differently. In the absence of more thorough surveys on this subject (I've looked and I can't find any, unfortunately), we'll have to make do with what we have.



> OK, the overwhelming majority of stuff sprayed on walls isn't art. It's a hideous mess that makes areas it infests look like an urban ghetto.
> 
> If your definition of graffiti only includes the tiny percent that most would recognise as artistic, then you are creating your own self-fulfilling definition which will always be true.
> 
> You might as well say Michael McIntyre is hilarious, if you only count the few jokes that make you laugh as really being jokes.


I see where you're coming from and it's not invalid, but I would object to the suggestion that _graffiti_ is responsible for making neighborhoods "look like an urban ghetto". Ghettos have existed long before the onset of modern graffiti, and moreover graffiti is not the culprit, just the response. It was not graffiti that crowded people into decrepit high-rises after destroying their old neighborhoods for this or that freeway; it was not graffiti that turned its back when crack and heroine were flooding into urban areas; it was not graffiti that gutted the education system so severely that book-less schools are now literally falling down.

So let me say, if you actually think that graffiti, and not the myriad of social ills that run deep in any capitalist society, causes areas to become an "urban ghetto", I would hope that you could take a wider view of the issue, because it's really social as much (if not more) as it is aesthetic.

As for the artistic merit of graffiti, I think you'll find that in many cities the average quality of graffiti is quite high. This is no doubt aided when city authorities work with the artists and provide legal walls in prominent places instead of trying to employ a draconian solution of violence and intimidation.

And at any rate, every artform has its highs and lows, it's what makes it an artform (I enjoy Baroque painting but I'll be the first to concede that there are large swathes of the Baroque that's entirely dull and uninteresting). If you say that you don't like the aesthetic of modern graffiti itself that's fine, I'm not trying to say that you're wrong for that; what I am saying is that let's at least be fair about the circumstances of the art, what gives rise to it and why it seems to endure as an artform (or whatever you prefer to call it). Regardless, my basic point is that so long as cities are being neglected by the state and by property owners, graffiti artists are not wrong in trying to make their neighborhoods look better, and I think that's what they've been doing in many instances.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ Your argument now is akin to those who justify armed robbery, mugging and other violent crimes against people as "the byproduct of a society where you are worth only as much as you own".

It is hard to keeping arguing with you *after you defined, in other thread, that the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe was a "restoration of capitalist tyranny"*.

I bet you miss the Berlin Wall then... full of graffiti.


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ Your argument now is akin to those who justify armed robbery, mugging and other violent crimes against people as "the byproduct of a society where you are worth only as much as you own".


First, such arguments are explanations, not justifications. Second, those crimes are entirely distinct from graffiti by virtue of being violent and aimed against people. Third, graffiti contributes to an improvement of derelict urban environments whereas the crimes you mention do nothing to alleviate the argued causes in general.

Well, looks like you've managed to stuff one sentence with three delusional falsities. Not bad, but we both know you can do better. :lol:



> It is hard to keeping arguing with you *after you defined, in other thread, that the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe was a "restoration of capitalist tyranny"*.
> 
> I bet you miss the Berlin Wall then... full of graffiti.


It's only hard for you to keep arguing with me because you lack the ability to argue. If you have a point you'd like to make about the fall of European socialism, I suggest you take it to that thread instead of trying to drag in unrelated rants whenever you can't think of something halfway relevant to say.

As for my feelings on the Berlin Wall, they're probably a bit too difficult for you to comprehend, given that they contain some degree of complexity and nuance. However, perhaps you'd like to lecture the many across Central and Eastern Europe now suffering from homelessness and unemployment and racist violence and declining life expectancy and alcoholism (all problems brought about by your precious capitalism coming back to town) that they're better off. Perhaps you'd like to, but you won't, because you can't. Get used to it.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Which EE countries still have declining life expectancy?


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

kaligraffi said:


> Third, graffiti contributes to an improvement of derelict urban environments


How come graffiti IMPROVES anything? Except among losers and outcasts who have a twisted vision about what is an "improvement"?


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## Int Cities&Scrapers (Feb 24, 2010)

Suburbanist said:


> How come graffiti IMPROVES anything? Except among losers and outcasts who have a twisted vision about what is an "improvement"?


Yes you seem to have all the right answers to that question Mr.10,000 posts


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Int Cities&Scrapers said:


> Yes you seem to have all the right answers to that question Mr.10,000 posts


I have the law on my side and that is enough


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## kaligraffi (Aug 20, 2011)

Jonesy55 said:


> Which EE countries still have declining life expectancy?


Russia, for instance, still has a male life expectancy rate around 5 years below where it was in the mid-80's.




Suburbanist said:


> How come graffiti IMPROVES anything? Except among losers and outcasts who have a twisted vision about what is an "improvement"?


Ah, now here we see how paper-thin your nonsensical prejudice really is. First, thank you for conceding all the other points except your own personal slant of who is a "loser and outcast" in spite of being seen as one by this entire forum...it's nice to know that even you recognize how little you have to contribute to the discussion.

Now onto your non-argument, graffiti improves crumbling urban environments by adding color and variation and visual form to spaces that previously had none. Therefore, it is an improvement.



> I have the law on my side and that is enough


White supremacists had the law on their side once...was that "enough"?

As always, a laughably absurd argument from someone who seems to produce nothing but. :lol:


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

But is it still declining? I was under the impression it had bottomed out and was now rising again?

Anyway, it's a moot point, the people of those societies overwhelmingly rejected them in favour of a new system but unfortunately the damaging social structures in place had their tentacles so firmly around the people that it caused damage when they were removed. There was little other option though, the societies and systems were dying anyway.......


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