Background
There is a very constant graffiti activity around the LA Eco-Village neighborhood. Some of it is considered gang graffiti, commonly known as tagging, although not all tagging is done by people who belong to gangs. There are taggers who are independent operators. And there are also those who practice another form of graffiti known as bombing.
Graffiti, whether gang related or not, is sometimes considered by the general public as a marker for insecurity. Anti-graffiti campaigns are established all around the word by police departments, business associations and even individuals. The most common practice is simply to repaint the walls on top of the graffiti. If done persistently this seems to be the most effective measure against it (it’s cost effective and deters writers to hit the same wall).
Some LA Eco-Villagers frequently paint the walls in the neighborhood. One of the most avid painters is George, a World War II veteran who has lived in the neighborhood for decades and is known by many neighbors. He is indeed one of the most engaged individuals in the embellishment of the area. Walls are also painted by affected businesses.
Another perspective on graffiti is that it is Street Art. And art does not necessarily have to be beautiful. Institutions and businesses treat street art as a form of crime because graffiti is made in most cases on surfaces that do not belong to the person who applies the graffiti, hence being a form of vandalism. Most measures against graffiti are repressive; from jail time and fines to simple erasure.
So what is the alternative?
Some see as the symptom of many other things a society is lacking. For example the absence of public spaces where ideas and art can be freely exchanged. Or the absence of a system for understanding diversity, which leads to segregation, which leads to gang formation, which becomes a highly territorialized way of understanding the city that relies heavily on graphic territorial marking.
On the other side, graffiti can sometimes bee seen as an alternative to that. For some, graffiti is public art in the hands of individuals in a context where the channels for expression either belong to the state or to larger institutions like corporations and universities.
Since Street Art is always in the threshold of legality it has developed forms of dialogue that survive despite repression. Street artists know that their stuff can be painted over, modified, copied, contested, or simply erased. The term Street Art usually refers to art of illicit nature.
Is in that context (or canvas) that some Eco-Villagers are trying to have a Graphic Dialogue with local graffiti that intends to be less repressive and that also enters the playground for it can also be erased or contested at the same level.
This is an experiment...
“What if -Jimmi Lizama said- instead of painting it the same color, we paint a square of a different color, and next time that someone tags on top, we paint another square with another color? At the end we’ll have a bunch of squares in a colorful pattern.” And so the idea caught on. There is a wealth of leftover paints around the Eco-Village so the first square was painted as you can see to the left. No one has written on top so far, but the expectation remains.
In a way there is not strict dialogue with this particular technique; erasure remains. But it can be said that there is a form of Play. And if play evolves, say, a tagger or graffiti artist writes on top of previous squares as a commentary on the squares themselves, then a form of dialogue might emerge.
This remains to bee seen. So far one Eco-Villager has commented: “well, the pink is a nice color, but i don’t think it goes there”. The square itself has not been painted over.
On April 8, 2006 another experiment dialogue was painted: a green haired character blowing bubbles, some of the bubbles are actual letters from the previous writing.
On a different scale this character is also a commentary on a society obsessed with cleanliness that consumes large amounts of cleaning products, many of them probably unnecessary. But even though soap is meant for cleaning it can also be used for play.
So the irony is double. The character’s intention is to play with the previous writing using the symbol for cleanliness itself, but in a way, soap cannot escape its nature.
Soap bubbles are also ephemeral, they do not last long - street art deals of the time with the fact that it is not meant to last, in opposition to establishment-approved art which earns its place in the closed doors long lasting archives of society (museums). The character has no mouth, for she/he is at the same level of those who might write on the wall because they have no voice.
And how is this "Eco"?
Ecovillages choose to relate to their immediate environment in creative ways, especially those in inner city locations.
Street Reclaiming is one strategy and it often starts by painting the streets with civilian made symbols that decorate and inform traffic. It could be said that graffiti art is a form of street reclaiming, or “public vertical space reclaiming”. In that sense graffiti and inner city ecovillages could be allies.
Ecovillage strategies also imply more dialogue than repression. The experiment documented in this page implies a form of graphic dialogue only, but it points to the idea of a larger public forum that starts from a local endeavor.
Property
The surfaces where graffiti appears are in most cases private or public property, hence graffiti is a form of vandalism. Those affected are most likely not directly responsible for the causes of graffiti itself, and yet, they pay some of the cost for it. Small businesses are affected in many cases and when graffiti is considered a quality of life issue whole neighborhoods may suffer from its presence.
When inscriptions or drawings are done in places with permission from the owners they are not considered graffiti anymore. Graffiti, be it considered art or not,is based on the modification of someonelse’s property without their permission. So in a society that places utmost importance to property graffiti is naturally considered illegitimate and/or illegal -one could say: improper- and not without good reason.
If most of the urban space we inhabit is privately owned then naturally private property will be the most affected. This leads again to the question
of how much actual public space there really is. And what are the better strategies the public has to reclaim space. In this discussion graffiti is clearly not the most effective nor the least impact causing strategy. It tends to affect other sections of the public and it uses unsustainable tools (like the spray can).
Street Gangs
Discussing street gangs is out of the scope of this page but there are some necessary remarks since a lot of the graffiti in the area is gang related.
Tags from two gangs have been identified in the area: the 18th street gang [1](a very large gang that spreads across the U.S and Central America) and the Rockwood Street 13 gang.
Gang related graffiti is not always considered territorial marking nor Street Art. In some cases it might be related to territory but due to the large area where some gangs are active this might be irrelevant. There are also other (criminal)gang activities that need to be understood in more sophisticated terms. These include extortion, drug sales, car theft, killing of other gang members and support of clandestine businesses.
Updates
New additions as of January 15th/2007
Before
After
September 2006
Friend and local graffiti artist “Cache” painted a chicken on a bicycle and the green line connecting the two characters
To see more of Cache’s art visit:
- http://www.myspace.com/cacheone
- And his rocketships at Echo Park http://www.lataco.com/taco/cache-rocket-ships-echo-park
