Peace

In the bottom corner of an otherwise banal (if well-executed) palimpsest of graffiti I spotted on a visit to the Cité last month, a text annotation (presumably with multiple authors, but the final result is of course to be considered complete and coherent, as of the snapshot in time it was recorded) with a nice message for the afficionado.

“☮2 [peace to] all the writers!”
[second hand] “...thief!”

Is "thief" appositive to “the writers” (leave aside the disagreement of number, which is acceptable in the vernacular of graffiti)? Is "thief" the signature of the peacewisher (prefixing an autograph with ellipsis being a semi-literate but attested practice)? Is the thief a third person, perhaps the reader, or society at large, complicit in the exploitation of unpaid labour that is public art, non-remunerated, consumed by every passerby, anonymous, unattributed, copied, stolen and exhibited with impunity? Is the thief me?

Well-wishes from a friend

Rattlesnake
Neck break
Find a charm at the foot of a stake

Hysteria
Night's eerier
Never forget dreams're yours to make

Gravity
No pity
You'll always fall, the Earth'll always take

Archéologie du graffiti

© Paul De Graaf, 2017.

Dans Le Monde de France cette semaine, l’histoire de Paul De Graaf, un néerlandais qui a posté sur Imgur des photographes presque archéologiques de trentes années de graffitis sur un mur à Nijmegen (Nimègue). Passons du vandalisme de cet « archéologue », qui détruit le passé qu’il prétend étudier (comme toujours), ça me fait pensée des mementos du mur de Berlin, autant qu’a la grotte de Lascaux ou les couleurs presques invisibles de la sculpture grecque. Ça serait fascinant de faire des analyses chromatographiques et chimiques pour étudier les peintures et autres traces (pollution, marijuana, traces biologiques) que s’agglomérent le long des trente ans d’histoire artistique qu’on témoigne ici.