Recently there was a small rash of discussion about ‘corporate’ graffiti, in response to a couple of projects. The most notable examples were a single Time Magazine billboard, and several iterations of the same ad for the launch the new Hummer. I never saw the Time billboard in person (I don’t even know if it is still up), but it was high on a building, and thus most of the commentary was indirect.
On at least two of the Hummer ads, including the one I saw personally at 2nd Street on Avenue A (on the side of the old children’s store — now becoming a Washington Mutual branch), the feeback was more immediate, in the form of defacement.
I understand this to be one of the most extreme forms of commentary, but cannot claim any greater knowledge of the idiolect of graf writing . The direct response was more about the subject matter (super-sized SUV) than the actual process (graf writers ‘sell-out’), though there was some indirect conversation about the latter as well. Call the defacement a clash of subcultures, since if there is a generalized urban culture identity, it isn’t so much about environmental sensitivity, at least when it comes to vehicle ownership.
The team who created the mural – the TATS CRU – have, after years of being one of the preeminent outlaw crews, actively pursued commissioned work (particularly advertising) for some time. The fact that they need to commidify their dissent in such a base way only really has to do with the fact that they don’t have a Yale School of Art pedigree that enables them to avoid the nastier realities of commerce. Or they haven’t talked up Jeffrey Deitch correct.
I don’t believe in the direct action school of resistance (burning Hummers, e.g.) nor do I support the ‘organized’ approach to murals. For after the Hummer mural on 2nd Street was painted over, a single line claim — Reserved for TATS CRU — replaced it. Excuse me? Reserved? What, there is now a protocol for illegal art? I-ron-ic (or is that Mor-on-ic).
There are other explanations: a service to aspiring taggers that any attempts would be obliterated, due to superior credentials and perhaps explicit permission from the building owners (though I can’t imagine WaMu is pleased with notion that their first foray into the EV would be pimping consumer goods — or maybe it is one of those community sensitivity exercises). All it really did was tempt me to vandalize some private property for the first time in my life (well, that I can remember). But considering the effort they’ve made over time to transform some pretty bleak streetscapes, and, unlike the plague of Chico that covers the EV (that damn PJPII mural still creeps me out everytime I see it — which is, unfortunately, daily), they are good at what they do, so they get a pass on the occasion act of arrogance.
One would hope, however, that such cheek is then justified by the work. Such hopes are dashed the moment one pauses to consider that ‘interesting’ was not a quality to be seen in anything done once ‘viral’ became not a legitimate ad category, but even a concept.
The new ad was mildly insulting, only because the only culture precedent that came to mind was Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, which was a scathing attack on relationship between media/advertising and race. I won’t go into specifics, since I’d be perpetuating a viral campaign that still hasn’t turned up on the internet, but it seems to be a haircare ad.
But, again, advertising inadvertently aping satire without a shred of self-examination? Hardly new [in fact, the designers responsible for some of blatantly racist fake products in Bamboozled were hired in the traditional manner — that is, they were contracted to develop product identities, the only qualification being they must be clearly racist, but found their program challenging, since they kept find more egregious examples in the real world during the course of filming]. Again, not worth writing home about, nor spending the odd thousand worlds railing against.
No, the signal failure of this exercise was revealed when I was walking by Soho Billiards, which has one of those annoying bathroom billboards mounted in their vestibule. In it was an exact small scale replica of the TATS CRU mural. In other words, the mural was actually created by some agency flunkie and delivered to a team that was hired for no other reason than their ability to diligently transcribe what is a sad piece of ‘edgy’ advertising. Even though they are partially responsible for creating the visual language of one of the most pervasive trends in graphic design (or art, if you please) in the late 20th century, they weren’t deemed capable of interpreting some hack shampoo ad.
You know, there are people who build some pretty amazing things out of tongue depressors or toothpicks, but you don’t see OMA hiring them to make models (well, not yet). But somehow it was necessary to acquire an appliqué of ‘real’ when any hack illustrator who is good with an airbrush would do. It’s not that any great claim of art is being made, but a small amount of buzz was manufactured when this first started happening, some of it under the rubric of make the advertising both sexy (ooh! former outlaws making ads!) and more palatable, since it would be filtered through the hands of those who are already part of the visual urban fabric. But this particular result is no more interesting than someone who makes a really big tinfoil ball.
Who to blame? Everyone, surely. The TATS site pretty aggressively courts this work, so I can’t imagine them keeping it real in any resolute way. Ad agencies? They are a tin-eared as, well, me, when it comes to what every might even mildly be called hip. The hair care people? Have you seen a Fructis ad? This is the Stanley Livingstone of hair care adverts. Even language such as ‘blame’ is a touch histrionic. Tagging is one of the more visceral rituals of cosmopolitan identity. The assertion of one’s name, garish and forceful, is what we all seek. If you can’t get your name in lights on Broadway, you can always paint it on a nearby wall, provided you have the gumption and fearlessness required. And such brazen chutzpah is rewarded with… a tepid exercise in pitching mass-market product to the great American Median. TATS should do a “Devolution of Graf Man” self-portrait as their next mural. Or they could paint the controversy and attempt to explicate why an intelligent designer would have put these particular wheels in motion. Regardless, be prepared to discover everything you have be taught about shampoo is wrong.
Bangladesh? The new axis of evil.
Debra Burlingame sure knows how to make an analogy, doesn’t she? In ceaseless effort to besmirch any public comment about the WTC that doesn’t originate from spectacularly original mind, or Karl Rove’s pocket, she popped of this one today:
Now I usually have to wait a long time before I can hit people over the head with my putative victimization (white, male, straight, etc. I’m of Italian descent, but I keep living in places lousy with Italians, so that usually gets me nothing), but finally, I get to trumpet my experience over hers. I am here to tell Debra Burlingame to back the fuck off, since I am a descendant of a victim of the Pearl Harbor attack.
Just like Hitchens’ finding out he is Jewish, I did come late to the impact of this victim status. Certainly I knew my whole life that my great uncle’s name was on the Arizona memorial, but I did not realize it enabled me to relentless belittle anyone who had political or social opinions that contradicted mine. And using her fascinatingly tortured logic, her pronouncement today, which showed an amazing lack of consideration for the feelings of the Families of 12/7 (this is support group I started earlier this morning — actually, you just witnessed its genesis; I’d invite you to join, but you need to produce a death certificate. Otherwise, find your own date-based tragedy) — a fact I can’t definitely ascertain, but it doesn’t matter specifically what the other families think, as their experience is absolutely unique and others cannot pass reasonable judgment either way — so her callous and ill-considered appropriation of our experience invalidates any and all her comments to date and for the indefinite future. In other words, since she lacks the personal experience of an historical event that lives in the memory of the entire country, there is no way for her to speak meaningfully about it, or anything else now, forever. Which is useful, since the Freedom Center up and remembered that being about Freedom is about, well, speaking one’s mind without fear of someone trying to supress your actions out of twisted ideological hatred and fear. Sure, it only took the one of the most important American historians quitting in disgust to get them to this point, but you have to break a few eggs, right? The entire fiasco is beginning to feel like the freeway scene in Altman’s Nashville, where most of the main characters in the film mill about randomly, willfully or incidentally ignoring others with whom they are later found to have intricate connections. By the end of the scene, the camera pulls back and amibent audio reduces everyone’s individual conversation into an indecipherable mass, everyone stuck in place by an unseen logjam out of which no one can see the way. But as long as we have the spirited efforts of Burlingame, we at least have a sign post indicating who is either morally bankrupt (everyone else) or incorruptable (her, just her). We eagerly await her next dispatch.