Showing papers on "Graffiti published in 2001"

The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London and New York

Abstract: List of Figures Shout Outs (AsThey Say) Introduction Climbing Down off the Fence: Locating our Standpoint and Values Are Theories of Subculture too Class Orientated? I Woz 'Ere: Tales from the Field Going Underground: A Journey into the Graffiti Subculture Constructive Destruction: Graffiti as a Tool for Making Masculinity Keeping its Distance: The Subculture's Separation from the 'Outside World' Making a World of Difference: The Personal Benefits of Subcultural Membership Conclusion Afterword: Writers Talk Back Bibliography Glossary Index

Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City

Abstract: Prologue1. A Tale of Two Cities2. Taking the Trains: The Formation and Structure of "Writing Culture" in the Early 1970s3. Writing "Graffiti" in the Public Sphere: The Construction of Writing as an Urban Problem4. Repainting the Trains: The New York School of the 1970s5. The State of the Subways: The Transit Crisis, the Aesthetics of Fear, and the Second "War on Graffiti"6. Writing Histories7. Retaking the Trains8. The Walls and the World: Writing Culture, 1982-1990Conclusion: A Spot on the WallAppendix: Sources from WritersNotesSelected BibliographyAcknowledgmentsIndex

Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England

Abstract: This work investigates writing practices such as graffiti, tattooing and inscriptions on implements, jewellery, clothing and other objects in early modern England. These writing practices invite the reader to imagine a world in which writing and drawing were not fully distinguishable, the page was not an important boundary, and modern assumptions as to what constitutes literacy were irrelevant. Juliet Fleming's exploration of virtually unknown literary artefacts provides a new perspective on 16th-century culture.

Graffiti, Crime Prevention & Cultural Space

Abstract: (2001). Graffiti, Crime Prevention & Cultural Space. Current Issues in Criminal Justice: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 253-268.

The Graffiti of Pharaonic Egypt: Scope and Roles of Informal Writings (c. 3100-332 B.C.)

Abstract: Graffiti, being a form of written communication invariably free of social restraints, are a far more accurate reflection of the character of the Egyptian era of the pharaohs than the far more polished artistic or literary works. This work is an overall attempt to offer insight into more than 2800 years of Egyptian and Nubian hieroglyphic and hieratic graffiti. Graffiti have long been neglected when compared to larger and more formal texts and inscriptions, and it is only in recent years that many important graffiti texts written in these scripts have been published and made available to wider scrutiny. For this work, extensive use has also been made of materials as yet unpublished.

Some History of the Development of Graffiti.

Abstract: This paper provides some history of the development of the conjecturemaking computer program, Graffiti. In the process, its old and new heuristics are discussed and demonstrated.

The Street as Political Space: Walking as Protest, Graffiti, and the Student Carnivalization of Belgrade

Abstract: Western assumptions of unthinking Serbian support for the policies of Slobodan Milosevic were upset by the success of popular protest in securing his removal in the autumn of 2000. In fact, just three years after his accession to power in 1989, there had already been massive student protests against the Balkan War, and these were repeated and surpassed in the winter of 1996–97, when Milosevic tried to disregard the success of the opposition in the local elections of that November. The student protests quickly took a theatricalized form, and their recurrent modes – graffiti, banners, street processions – were successfully carnivalized, to become popular performative events. This feature provides a chronology of the main developments to complement the more analytical study by Milena Dragicevic-Sesic of the nature of this organic but ironic response to an authoritarian regime, which gave old traditions a late twentieth-century voice.

Youth Graffiti as an Existential Coping Device: The Case of Rabin's Assassination

Abstract: The research explores the symbolic meanings of the graffiti drawn by Israeli adolescents and youth on the walls around Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv, named after the Israeli Prime Minister, Izhak Rabin, and following his assassination in the same square. The assassination occurred during a period in which Israeli society was characterized by feelings of anomie and crisis due to intensified social and political conflicts. The image constructed and conveyed by the graffiti is that of an eclectic leader; and that image is also the reflection of the cultural characteristics emerging from the liminal situation of youth in Israeli society. In the discourse carried on by means of walls, the main trend is the attempt to combine polar and/or diverse characteristics, in a holistic manner. Three spheres of liminality are discussed: liminality of the leader, liminality of youth, and liminality of Israeli society. The discussion is carried out in the context of the existential situation of youth in Israel.

Taking Up Space: An Interview with Bio of TATS CRU, Inc..

Abstract: I began my interview with Bio with an idea of graffiti as a pure form, as the human need to create, separated from content, context, culture, and reason. Graffiti, or so I thought, was a raw material, capable of offering an unobscured view into what lies beneath. Although not initially aware of it, I was looking for the myth of graffiti: the romantic epic of renegade writers, braced in an uncompromising stance of rebelliousness against an unjust and bourgeois society. Like heroic ghosts, I imagined them creeping deftly through an underground labyrinth, moving in and out of the shadows, here one moment, gone the next, leaving beautiful signatures as the mark of their fleeting presence. The legend of the writer, of the masked Zorro of subterranean New York City, “unfolded on the trains, in the dark tunnels where they encountered danger, high voltage, cold crushing steel wheels, giant hurtling monsters” (Chalfant and Prigoff 1987, 8).During the fall of 2000, I met with Bio, a thirty-four-year-old writer from the Bronx, at his studio in Hunt's Point. He was once the embodiment of the graffiti hero, a young vandal, illegally bombing New York subway's No. 6 IRT line as part of the Tough and Talented (or TATS) CRU. “We started at the height of the scene,” he reminisces in an interview with Mhari Saito. “There was so much painting going on, with everyone talking to each other” (Saito 1996, 2). But things began to change under the heavy fist of the city's antigraffiti campaigns. With the advent of the new paint-resistant metal subway cars, or “ding-dongs,” in 1987, TATS CRU and other writers were driven out of the subway and above ground. Rather than living the myth of the New York graffiti writer, committing beautiful acts of transgression against social law and accepted order, Bio was forced to give up the struggle.In 1995, Bio and two lifelong friends, BG 183 and Nicer, transformed their graffiti into a commercial enterprise, marketing their skills to private interests and corporate advertisers. The three writers refounded (and renamed) their group as Top Artistic Talent's Cm, Inc., now an advertising agency commissioned to create graffiti for business murals and billboards, rap music backdrops, and video sets. In the past decade, the group's transition has proved financially successful. They have painted fifty murals for Coca-Cola throughout the New York area and are working on a project for the House of Seagram's. Local churches, schools, and individuals also hire the agency to create public murals and memorial walls (plate 1).

Graffiti as Feedback Tool in Library Management: A Nigerian Case Study

Abstract: This paper discusses the potential of graffiti scribbled by users on library walls, furniture and materials as feedback tool in library management. An Analysis of 285 graffiti found in different places within the library of the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria yielded interesting results. While 162 (56.84%) of them were social, political and religious in nature, the remaining 125 (43.16%) covered readers' opinions of different aspects of library services in the university. Those related to the library were further categorised into graffiti on (a) staff and their attitudes (25.20%); (b) quality of services rendered (20.32%); (c) noise level in the library (15.44%); (d) particulars of books used (17.88%); (e) frustration with other library users (11.38%); and (f) miscellaneous matters about the library (9.75%). Next to suggestion boxes, graffiti may be said to represent, to a large extent, users' candid opinions on library services and effectiveness. The paper recommends that university libraries should take time to study and analyse graffiti found in their libraries for their potential as feedback mechanism in library management. (African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science: 2002 11 (1): 17-24)

Cinq graffiti nabatéens du Sinaï

Abstract: Publication of five Nabataean inscriptions discovered on a rock cliff in the south of Sinai during an archaeological survey conducted in 1977 by Jean-Baptiste Humbert and Etienne Nodet, from the French Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem.

On Some Conjectures of Griggs and Graffiti.

Abstract: We discuss a conjecture of J. R. Griggs relating the maximum number of leaves in a spanning tree of a simple, connected graph to the order and independence number of the graph. We prove a generalization of this conjecture made by the computer program Graffiti, and discuss other similar conjectures, including several generalizations of the theorem that the independence number of a simple, connected graph is not less than its radius.

Petites inscriptions syriaques sur une tablette de pierre (vallée de la Qadicha, Liban)

Abstract: First presentation and edition of a bunch of Syriac inscriptions and graffiti inscribed on a basalt board located in the museum ofthe former Saint-Elisha monastery, in the Qadisha valley.

Confessions of an Ethnographer: Reflections on Fieldwork with Graffiti Writers in Montreal

Abstract: Tonight, I jumped over a fence dividing city from federally owned Canadian National railway property. It took me longer than it would have any writer. They're used to it. I'm not. Still, I managed to pull myself over the 6-foot steel fence, complete with barbed wire and positioned slightly at an angle that made it difficult for me to rest my feet and lower body on the fence while I pulled myself up with my arms. I had to rely on my upper-body strength--of which I don't have much--and haul myself over to reach the other side. Not an easy job. I imagined for a moment what it could be like trying to run from the cops. I walked on and along the railroad tracks with my guide, a local writer, who mindfully pointed out sections of various freight trains stationed along the strip that showed graffiti. I saw trains punctuated with tags, others with throw-ups, still others with beautifully executed pieces.(2) As usual, the graffiti on the freights all listed from where they came: Santa Fe, Chicago, Vancouver, Montreal. After taking snapshots and discussing a few of the most stylistically meaningful pieces, we slowly made our way out of the site. It was then that my guide suddenly said: "I don't believe I jumped a fence with Louise Gauthier tonight." He had first seen me on CBC television's City Beat in the role of "graffiti expert." He saw me as an authority on graffiti and respected me for it. I respected him because, being a writer, he knew more about the practice of graffiti than I did.As with the other writers I came to know, issues of gender, age, education and class worked themselves through our relations with one another. I sometimes had the sense of being perceived as the matriarch of graffiti--given my age, sex and educational background. I ended up studying the activities of young men, who were very different from me. Nevertheless, they let me in and I felt privileged that they allowed me to be a temporary "insider." When I could do something to help them out, I did: reclaim a camera from a police station which had been kept following a graffiti-related arrest; work out some of the logistics needed to successfully put on graffiti events; share photographs of graffiti I had taken during trips to other cities; discuss with them what it means to write.Figure 1 [Not Transcribed]In the field, I slowly developed relationships with writers. I worked particularly closely with a small number of them. This helped me develop a better understanding of who they are, and at the same time made me see more clearly who I am. While many would have felt threatened by some of these young men most people see as deviants, criminals, or "freaks," I felt safe and accepted. And this despite the fact that some (and therefore most likely all) knew about my personal life: queer. Some of them followed me through my separation with my partner of five years, though they never pried into the matter or asked questions. I walked and talked with the writers both alone and in groups, visited desolate places with them both during the day and late at night, and wandered in areas most people try to avoid. Some of them knew my former partner and during our relationship included her in activities and conversations, and treated her with respect. Despite my queerness, or maybe because of it, we were able to develop warm relationships, devoid of sexual tension, and in some cases discussed gender roles, love and commitments. In this respect, I became one of the boys.During a recent press conference at Montreal City Hall that served to officially launch the city's new zero-tolerance plan with regard to the practice and presence of graffiti in the metropolitan area, I recall being both upset and unsure about the kind of impact this plan would have on the writing community. I was already witnessing fragmentation within the community and feared that this kind of effort would dismantle whatever bond had been created among writers, and between writers and myself. …