• Films: WildStyle & Style Wars

It was written by Nancy Macdonald a qualified and passionate ethnographer who has an extremely self-reflective approach to her work. She observes the impact of her gender and the limitations and lack thereof in her interactions with informants.

As an academic paper it is heavily laden with intellectual language with a phenomenal understanding of graffiti jargon. I feel like this thus narrows the target audience from a wide commercial usage, it’s for other academics and potentially graffiti practitioners to better understand the history and origins of their craft. It also has high potential in a ethnographic audience along with studiers of Gender and Sexuality with its exploration of gender roles and the predominance of men in the field.

I feel like the text is an exploration into the vast expanse of surfaces in the city and how they communicate an equally expansive relay of communications. It aims to bring the reader more in touch with their environments and understanding them.

It was written in 2024 by Sabina Andron, an architectural historian and ‘urban scholar’ interested in the surfaces of cities as sites of political contention. She seems to approach her writing from a political understanding as well as a sense of ownership of the city on behalf of the citizens in it. Whilst touching on graffiti a lot in her academic career, she has a phenomenal interplay with its effect and interaction with the city.

The writing touches on a rarely visited idea that graffiti was used as a scapegoat for the cities shortcomings, emphasised by a phenomenal quote by Sommer 1975:

‘I cannot stand by silently and hear the dirty, dingy and depressing stations hailed as an exemplary standard of urban design. No one can attribute the decades of which the stations remained dirty, poorly lit, foul smelling and crime-ridden to a few kids with spray cans.’

The paper looks at the predictable failures of various administrations to successively and predictably combat graffiti as itself an addition to public panic and ‘fear-mongering’. To save face and maintain a superior moral highground they’d have to double down on their efforts and image.

It makes a phenomenal point which I agree is prevalent in modern governments is ignoring the primary issues resulting in deviant and criminal behaviour. Rather than addressing the causes behind graffiti and homelessness and similar ‘crimes’ they push them to the side and deal with less scary problems as a performative measure to prove themselves to a public image.

I struggle to see who this is specifically aimed at, I think it’s a device to communicate to academics and higher authorities in a fantastically intellectual manner about the shortcomings and failures of government to circumnavigate the real issues they need to combat.

Thus I find it has a strong opinionated stance and political message behind its analysis and definitely focuses it’s attention towards the political and social actions of the ‘city’ rather than the artists.

somewhat effective in addressing the short-term effects of
graffiti, removing graffiti without addressing writers' motivations to paint ultimately will prove ineffective.

https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/honors_theses/617/

merely take a strict zero tolerance approach where engagement is seen as a diversion that hopes to tame a

vigorous and diverse form of expression.

tougher policing, new anti-graffiti legislation, commissioned works, education, penalties, establishment of graffiti

placement.

game” – artists, he says, avoid heritage buildings and, for the most part, residential properties.

and local communities to investigate providing legitimate avenues for murals and street art to be displayed.

The City of Melbourne will engage with the arts community regarding murals and street art, for example, in

conjunction with cultural festivals or arts development projects in the public domain.

The City of Melbourne will positively engage with graffiti writers in mentoring and arts programmes to facilitate

opportunities for legitimate artistic expression and to divert their efforts away from illegal and towards high quality

work.

It was for this reason I wanted the displays in this original idea to be very regal. I loved this idea of showing this dirty vandalism as a prestigious achievement

It just didn't take centre stage

This then made me reconsider how stylised my 'frames' would be if I were to use that visual language as If it was in the form of a Japanese Pagoda, it will immediately put into the minds of a viewer that it is about Japanese Street art. which would be fantastic if that is what I chose to write about.

As my title centred my work around the relationships between the groups that interact with graffiti a project reflecting those opinions and relationships started to grow from this root of irony and visual language.

I then found an ancient second shop which sold frames for £5, I grabbed a couple.

There were some old frames knocking around the university from projects of old, ancient things but had been painted a bright gold

I then touched up some of the brightness and white points to accentuate the frame and colours in the graffiti

Despite creating a few slides for quotes, i really didn't like how they ended up looking

Went through heaps of variations of the original layout. Adding in tracing paper prints later on took some fiddling around but it was hard to get a feel for the book without seeing it made up.