battle scars

Spadina Street Level Tag

A large CS crew throwie over takes the loading dock doors of a wear house in China town. CS is evidently in a feud for the area with GR. I am not familiar with either of the crews but this territory full of markets and a huge amount of traffic is one to be coveted by anyone wanting to get up. The throwie here is a two-tone fill-in with an outline. A tag like this would be done in haste but is done by someone with a great amount of practice as the skilled black and white outlines are finessed over the sparse white fill. The grey-scale quality of this piece makes it appear in contrast to the colourful baskets, buildings and fruit stands in this environment. The GR! In red bleeds out this tag and X’s out the crew. A crossout is an insult in the highest degree in this culture, thus this heated exchange no doubt is a continuing controversy. Simply put this is a territorial claim overthrown and instep with a diss. The use of red over the colourless original is both a vibrant insult and a distancing mechanism.

Battles like this can be seen playing out across the city on a regular basis, but not as frequently as the hayday of graffiti crew wars. Most artists coexist peacefully with little reason for conflict...the changing scapes in the city constantly provide new space for new work. The only dissing that occurs is when a relatively obscure or new writer (toy) takes the space or crosses out the work of an established one. As I was once told

"We don't beef, 'cuz were mostly all on the level. The only problems arise when some fool goes over our space or our work. See we know all the kids 'round here and they're glad to destroy some fuckup. They'll call them out and never give 'em a chance to breathe. Other than that its all love, and the cops leave us alone cause they only want the gangs." -ANONYMOUS WRITER

Those who are struggling to establish themselves, or possess an ill conception of this world are the ones toys fall into this trap. On the flip side writers who aren't so kind as the one I've quoted here will criticize the weaker work they feel obstructs the path of the righteous who in the public eye get painted with the same brush. This fear that someone will 'ruin it' for everyone else lends itself to a tricky distinction and, as with any art, worth is in the eye of the beholder. Gold to some may be gawdy to others, and gawdy to the king may be beauty to the masses.





Phone Booth poster (Spadina)

On the streets many forms are implemented. Here is a piece done in the comfort of ones home or studio with great care and attention to detail. The artist needs not fear getting caught while producing the work so great care is taken and time given to the detail. The faces bleeding out of other faces implies a connectedness of even the most strikingly differentiated faces. The use of line for depth and texture implies some classical training (formal style) while the imagery itself lends itself to the tradition of street art. The skewed and ugly monikers draw attention from the banal, the mundane. A piece like this symbolizes blank stares of strangers, grouped misunderstanding, indifference. The artist is filled with disdain. Its placement leaves it in plain view of any pedestrians and the irony of it being on the side of a communication device could be mere coincidence, but is intriguing nonetheless. Faces in the clouds? Could this represent the common day dream of the population, connected but disassociated? Could I just be reading too heavily into it all? It was plastered here quickly and with little effort. Items like this may not last as long, but they are easy to repoduce, to apply and offer little risk for the artist of getting booked.

Tags and throwies are rampant along the doorways and side streets of the city. They range in terms of lettering, and content. Some are abstracted letters of the alphabet, but in a city that prides itself on multiculturalism, there are many alphabets to choose from. One can get lost just in trying to decipher the range of characters on the walls, which make up the body of Toronto graffiti, however I feel the more important contemplation is spent on determining the significance. Few citizens bother to read into them at all – or that is to say the majority of the tags and bombs that face of the scene in this city. These mostly communicate back and forth between the artists and writers themselves. Fleeting battles waged are encapsulated in ephemeral works. My interest lies in the pieces that reach out to the community. The work that speaks to the world, not that of the night marauders who deal in public space.

Street graphics push the limits of the written word and animate the static landscapes they fill in. This is true for the tags as well as the pieces – but so do the corporate posters that litter the same space. The politics behind unauthorized works of art in the public domain is something that intrigues me. Neoliberalism pushes for the privatization of the globe while the movement against the financial strong arming of communities and rape of that which is public pushes the limits of creativity and contemporary attention spans. That said, some of it is pathetically shallow. The drastic void between relevant works and markings that do just as much damage to any forward momentum is miles wide. Tags littered across the cityscape may be a big ‘fuck you’ to the corporate suits and ad agencies, but they are just as damaging to padestrian eyes as any poor ad. Good ads exist; bad graffiti exists. These points of truancy do not change the fact that the political motivation behind each side falls on either side of a huge fence. And as both sects find ways to tear holes and climb across this divide, it becomes harder to tell the difference. Graffiti advertisements and commissioned pieces; commercialization has dragged the medium through puddles of appropriation, aped styles and bad taste. Marc Ecko nearly ruined graffiti for the diehard writers and then for the investors. He sold something that was at its heart free, he spread styles from the streets to suburban closets, and then when that wasn’t enough he made a video game which tore down the principles of the form to vandalism, gang wars and clichéd style. He fed false meanings to the masses and built up a strawman for the detractors to burn to the ground. Luckily you can kill authenticity, but you can’t kill an idea and political work is still the backbone of a flabby cultural revolution.








Graffiti has been worked and reworked, built up and torn down from the early 60s through the glory days of the 80s gallery scene, the backdrop of the rise and fall of hip-hop and the y2k technology bubbles. Writers have been looking for new ways to express themselves with simplistic tools, allowing the mastery come through the work itself. Challenging the status quo, pushing the public to the edge and constantly reminding the people that these are our streets. Graffiti works in two directions with respect to this idea. On one hand are the people who advocate street works, feeling that the beautification of their city is better handled by fellow citizens, living in harmony with the colourful patterns and designs; while the other sect is reminded that the streets are free, that we should take in to question and careful consideration everything that makes claim for the space we all share, and are pushed into a frenzy of scrutiny rather than passivity and complacency. Graffiti doesn’t sell anything but ideas. The exception of course is when it gets co-opted and aped by the ruling class who seed their lust for dollars into an urban campaign, so transparent.







FOR LEASE, a light show running across the front of a building that was for lease, how creative right? is no place safe? AD AD AD!