European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - April 22, 2007, Darmstadt, Hesse Sunday april 22 2007 Page 9 a writer who says he got approval from the owner sprays his script on a Sodo warehouse he says he spends More than a year on paint Sod area Busi Ness people say they spend anywhere from to a month getting rid of the Graffiti the City fines them if they dont Graffiti expresses what we rarely hear Tom Dobrowolsky a University of Washington graduate student rapt by How we communicate in and with Public space stops to regard a Mefa door in Seattle Bohemia hippie Fremont neighbourhood set Back in a Foo deep Alcove it has become a temporary bulletin Board a Chat room of sorts of Spray painted scribbles we Call Graffiti tags these Marks cant be confused with Graffiti Art they Are labels brands and unreadable to those outside the subculture its a private conversation in Public like that cellphone Yarker on the bus who left Marks on the door which came first do they reply directly to one another Are they part of the same group How Long have they been there and Why Are they still the City is a Library says Dobrowolsky who co directs the us Urban archives project which Cata logs examples of ephemeral Street communication buildings Are like books we annotate with addresses and signs Graffiti Well that like the scribbling you maybe put in the margins but do like it or not the marginalia we Call Graffiti is a fact of City life and academics like Dobrowolsky and his partners believe its Worth documenting for research unofficial Street signs Are part of the Public conversation and Graffiti represents a particularly heated debate Seattle City government other agencies and private property owners reply to it with millions of dollars Worth of erasing through paint Power Wash ing and simple human scrubbing private property owners get fined if they dont Buff the damage done to them mayor Greg Nickels especially hates it he sub scribes to the broken windows theory which essentially says a Graffiti tag left a buffed invites More Graffiti and a lot of Graffiti eventually tells the Public the affected area is unsafe despite the constant buffing and aggressive prose cution Graffiti remains ubiquitous it is vandalism the act meaning As much As if not More than the writing on the Wall the majority resembles the scribe bling of a 2yearold wielding a Crayon but some shows stunning creativity and Talent mostly teens and 20something men writers give All sorts of reasons some say its about the Art or Selex pression or protest against a corporate ownership or society imbalance or All of the above they say government Gray Blank Walls Are oppressive and Public advertising is manipulative ultimately they say tagging Means i exist in Here and Ive got a place in the Public forum i too can advertise weve been writing on Walls since Cave dwelling Days modern american Graffiti began on the streets and in the subways of new York and Philadelphia in the late 1960s almost immediately it became a subject of extreme polarization and serious sociological study the subculture Speaks of bombs and bites and Burns to write to copy to Excel it purports to possess a code of rules and a Hierarchy of sorts that separates toys know nothings punks beginners from Kings talented it has its own Way of hurling insults and dismissing there is very Little gang Graffiti in Seattle authorities say but it All involves to a degree marking territory taggers use property both Public and private As a photos by the Seattle the writing is on the Wall for this writers work As he spells out Amer on a Seattle warehouse in Sodo a District popular with such Graffiti artists despite strict anti Graffiti Laws the vandalism continues Public utilities Graffiti rangers and coworker hous ton Bradley make no artistic judgments As they arrive Early one morning at a West Seattle overpass they Start on opposite ends each toting a roller and a bucket of Cemen Gray paint Twenty minutes later they meet in the Middle and the slate is wiped clean it will be marked up within a week the rangers will return to Buff it clean taggers come Back rangers Buff again a tit format conversation you might say prompt removal is the key says Frazier they will test you Over and Over again but we keep it up letting them know Well be Back hopefully get bored someday grow up and find something else to do Many companies grudgingly accept Graffiti cleanup As the Cost of doing business Between and a month in the Sodo District says Mike Peringer president of the business association there like Dobrowolsky Irina Gendelman and Giorgio Aiello Are graduate students and co directors of Urban archives the three Grad students United from different disciplines but the same interest in unofficial communication they began the archives project in 2004 the projects site is which contains a link to a sear Chable database of images Graffiti accounts for about half of the Sites 4000 images from Here and elsewhere Many would just like it All to disappear but Aiello emphasizes that their task is not to judge whether Graffiti is Good or bad but to consider it and other unofficial Street signs As part of the dialogue we think it is important As historical record Aiello says How do people out of the mainstream communicate and shape culture its important because where does a researcher go to find an alternative record Graffiti rangers paint Over a Venus de Milo stencilled under the alaskan Way viaduct their efforts rarely seem to discourage the making of More Graffiti medium its part Politico i statement but ultimately they want to be respected by Peers and noticed by the Public a 30yearold Seattle visual artist who sprayed elaborate pieces in California until he was 25 says he began As a teenager As a Way to literally and figuratively leave his Mark the general Public lacks the recognition that there is a certain segment of society for whom there is no real Means of self expression he says protest was certainly a part of it i was a child then and i needed approval but after a while facing constant govern mental erasing and the threat of prosecution it no longer was Worth the risk Stacy Frazier Painter Crew chief for the Seattle n q co cd 1 cd co cd q 5 cd 3 0
