Borf pleads guilty to felony charges!
If ya'll been sleeping on the borf phenomenon, then please pull away the warm honey milk and replace that shit with some aeresol fumes. Anyway, Borf is a dude from Washington, who reeked havoc on the city, starting about four years ago until he was recently caught at the age of 18. His tags, throws ups, burners, and stencils often express political motivations, whether explicitly or subtlely. The most famous of his phrases proclaims that, "grown-ups are obsolete." His graffiti antics, and persuasive style, lays testament to the widespread alienation of youth in america in relationship to our ridiculous political situation, as well as the banal daily lifestyle of the typical job in the city. In a way we can simply connect the unfortunate aspects of our domestic and global lifestyle; the more you work for the system and benefit from the fruits of the american economy, the more the blunt of our globalized politics lays on your shoulders.
Nonetheless, Borf got caught, and initially went to the courthouse wearing a blazer covered with tons of spraypaint. The judge immediately made him take off the coat, labeling it as evidence for the prosecution. Yesterday, he came back to court apparently looking cleaned up and conceded his guilt to the court. If he doesn't go to prison, which he probably won't considering the dude isn't coming from the projects, he will have to clean up graffiti, including his own.
So my questions considering the borf phenomenon are the following; how do graffiti artists not feel guilty that the people who clean up their "vandalism," (and it will always be vandalism as long as private property exists,) are largely the working class -- people who are for the most party, already fucked by the system? It's funny, because even the people who were cleaning up Borf's stuff, found it intriguing, even aesthetically powerful even though their jobs required the cleanup. In this direction, it seems like the mainstream attitude can respect the discipline and aesthetic that comes out of the graffiti artist but never the political or under-represented motivations for putting it on the street. We're walking a fine line between the autonomy of the artist and the necessary relationship with the society at large. A lot of people really do it find it uglier than a blank wall, as if the words or images come out and attack them. When crossing through neighborhoods where more graffiti shows up on walls, it automatically has some kind of relationship to the danger of the area, as if everybody is a gangster. Graffiti artist = potential rapist. I suppose it's the same interpretation that goes on with the marijuana user -- once you start breaking the law in one fashion, it opens up the gateway for a flood of violent anarchy against the dignity of the common citizen.
"It's a sad commentary on our society that he will probably take his fame as a vandal and transform it into fame as an artist," said Phil Carney of Dupont Circle, who has scoured graffiti from his neighborhood for years and who came to court to learn the case's outcome.
"But there's no question he has talent and determination. Properly challenged, he could accomplish just about anything. Just let's hope it's less destructive."
continue the article... I'm a little bit too lazy to setup a link.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/12/AR2005121201623.html?nav=rss_print/asection
So how can graffiti artists go about understanding their necessary relationship with a society at large that does not respect their vandalism and never will simply by the profoundly violent act of putting it up on private property?
What we really need more than anything else at this point is a critical discussion with the community at large about who is doing graffiti and why; graffiti artists, students, academics, people on the street, the media at large even. There are numerous communities who participate in the practice, ranging from the lower classes to the upper, from communities of color to whites, from america to across the globe. It takes on the political form, the gang form, the beautiful form, the social commentary form, fashion junkies, young scribbles of anxiety or empowerment, the celebrity wish, and the list continues to go on. It seems like the monotonous totalizing effort of American media fails to understand the pluralism of graffiti, as if the word only had one definition. We no longer leave any room for marginal practices in our society, and perhaps that's why they tried to box hiphop, in general, into bullshit, stable, easily consumed vocabulary. But once again, it seems like the single act of graffiti, does not quite accomplish an authentic autonomous effort -- there will always be the people who clean it up, who feel scared when they look at it, who no longer take their children to a certain neighborhood, who turn it into a marketing product. Ah fuck.
This post became a lot longer than I planned, I supposed things have been germinating for me. Too bad we don't have a forum anymore, but feel free to email me or hit up a comment underneath.
Hope finals are climaxing well my peoples! I'm going to some hiphop, influenced by jazz show, on Friday, where the Procussions are headlining for this French group Hocus Pocus. I'll tell you what the deal is.
mike
1 Comments:
"The tycoon of the book market is the author of fiction for the masses. It would be wrong to assume that these buyers always prefer bad books to good books. They lack discrimination and are, therefore, ready to absorb sometimes even good books. It is true that most of the novels and plays published today are merely trash. Nothing else can be expected when thousands of volumes are written every year. Our age could still someday be called an age of the flowering literature if only one out of a thousand books published would prove to be equal to the great books of the past."
-Ludwig von Mises (deceased austrian economist), published in 1956.
Wait, I thought this response was supposed to be about hip hop and Borfs recent hangup. Well, while Mises makes an excellent point about literature, I feel that the idea can be carried to art. In the article that Mike drew most of his information from, big tymer Phil Carney also is quoted as saying...
"But there's no question he has talent and determination. Properly challenged, he could accomplish just about anything. Just let's hope it's less destructive."
Throughout the article there is focus on Borfs future studies at art school. Looking at the mass-production and banality of the american life that Borf is directing his work against, I cant help but apply what Mises said to modern day art schools. Out of the thousands of art schools that exist in the world today (more than any other time in history, I would presume) I cant help but wonder, where all the artists at?
Seemingly, thousands upon thousands exit each year with tools, skills, and theories ready to take upon more artistically or abstractly fashioned positions of today. If one out of a thousand artists that graduated could write the way Stendhal wrote, or paint with the color of Matisse, then where the army at?
The response of authorites after Borfs capture was this: we have him and its time for justice to be served. At the same time, Borf is acknowledged as having skill, and being encouraged to continue his career after what I see as being tamed at another art school.
Borfs tactics of rebelling against a system has yielded a response like this: We dont like what you do mainly because it is illegal, but if you tame it, roll your energy and creativity through the system you are rebelling against, then in the future Borf, you could be a really good artist.
So, I conclude with another question. Often times when taking a form such as hip hop, the power of graffiti and suddenly directing it through a system that it was created as a response to, can it still be powerful? Can it still bomb buildings and break speakers?
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