on Graffiti
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‘street art’ or graffiti is something in a repressed ( of expression ) culture can be justified for the masses. In a more ‘developed’ culture it is a sign of degradation and vandalism…
Its irony in a westernised culture is that while done outside the avenues of ‘mediated culture’ it is absorbed and filtered through it thus not making it a break through expression of oppression.
Graffiti will always be considered a repressed form of expression because of its inherent structure. Fundamentally the modernization of defacing private properties makes it vandalism but as it is absorbed by traditional means of cultural display, it becomes merely a graphic expression to be consumed like any other. Throughout history its sophistication has morphed into what today has become advertising and corporate branding, filtered through a transnational capitalist culture.
Urban support used as its venue to reach an even undesired spectator, the defacing of private property outside the established transnational capitalist means is a lure of the rebellious spirit which finds its voice and ideas repressed by that system. yet once illuminated by that very system as a justified cultural expression , its very voice is subdued.
An example of popular visual political activism in art can be demonstrated with Krysztof Wodiczko