The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

7/31/2019 The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

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The Subconscious Art of Graffiti RemovalAnalysis of the Film by Matt McCormick (2002)

by Teresa M. Tipton

for Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague

White Pages ProgramUncertain States of America Exhibition

2007

The video, The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal (2002) by Matt McCornick (USA)is a playful recontextualization of the relationship between graffiti, the socialenvironment it inhabits, and the impact of public policy against it. With a tongue-in-cheek commentary, the narrator of the video provides a mock analysis of thesignificance of removing graffiti from private and public property as if it were asystemized phenomenon of art. In the background is heard the repetitous looping of

a digitized sound wave, as if a heart monitor in a hospital or a machine from theindustrialized surroundings that are shown in the video. These imposing structures ofindustrialization within the urban environment become both canvas and theatre forgraffiti artists and those who act against them, as if opposing players taking their sidein the stage of transgression and law enforcement. One side uses the property asboth protest and backdrop for random but creative acts of painting tags personalized and symbolic signatures - defying a systm which places those who actagainst it, outside of its parameters. Graffiti as works of art themselves, defaces thepresentational face, calling into question what is art, who art is for, who is allowed tomake it, and how is it recognized. Ones mark is thus placed where it is unauthorized,a surrepititious, rule-breaking act. Those who oppose but cannot stop these actions,act on behalf of the property owners and the property itself to erase its existence, asthe graffiti itself protests. Graffiti removal on the other hand, enforces what has beenauthorized and legislated in order to restore the property to its former, unmarkedstatus, as if it never existed, just like the people who created it in the first place.

The use of the word tagto describe graffiti itself functions as a metaphor to achildrens games, where running away from an it the one who will get you - is notnot only funded with more money than the arts themselves, but authorized by publicpolicy. The manifesto of public policy to remove graffiti every day in Portland, Oregonwhere the video is made, demonstrates graffitis ubiquitousness. But authorship, like

the results of its removal, place graffiti in the uncertain position of being concealed,as its removal personifies. By giving the status of art to the results of this removal, thefilm punctures the facade upon which the status of art is fabricated in the first place.

Thus, the juxtaposition of graffiti removal as if it were an evolutionary trend in artbased on the development of post-abstract expressionism and the influence ofRussian constructivism, plays with the way in which signification is accorded byestablished authorities in the art world, analyzing and thus projecting its ownintentionality into imagery. The apparent free-floating rectangles of paint over a pieceof graffiti, are compared to an untitled Rothko and Malevichs, Suprematism wherethe rejection of recognizeable imagery and the so-called repression of

communication entirely, pokes fun at the psychology of art, which follows Freudsexample ofLeonardo, where he attempts to analyze not just how the artist manages


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to impress and arouse emotions in us to which we had not realized ourselvescapable of, but to make determinations whether or not the artists intentions weresuccessfully expressed by such awakenings.

That Freud believed the artist creates a world of fantasy which is taken very seriously

yet is also separated from reality, accords a surrealism to the act of creativeimagination, as the repetitive digital sound track mirrors. This imaginative world isexactly the parody that the narrator mimics. While the pathographic interpreter of artmay respect the integrity of a work of art as a consciously framed cultural object, asSpitz concedes, their efforts to explain artistic motivations perhaps may not wholly betraceable by depth psychology.

Thus, the narration borrows from this pathographic tradition, where psychologicaltheories attempt to construct the assumed hidden and conflictual drives that motivateartists to produce certain kinds and styles of art. The identification and classificationof styles of graffiti removal as if they were works of art that the authors did not

themselves know they were producing, is more than irony. It is a mirror of a processthat imposes itself upon artists and what they produce as if they were themselvesmerely a product of this introspective and projective analysis. In this realm, conceptsformulate experience for its spectators and then through reason and logic,demonstrate how to understand what is thought perceptually in this context. Theomnipotence of this externalizing authority is evident, then, not only incategorizations and related correspondences, but its very interpretive framework. Itshows us that all critique in art is the result of someones interpretive framework, andusually not our own.

In this context, subliminal and repressed impulses rupture everyday realityin anunconscious conspiracy as the narrator tells us, to not only create the graffiti in thefirst place but within others to remove it. This unconscious conspiracy takes usfurther, as the blending of a pathographic rewording of an officials speech, wherewords underneath his words are given to us on the screen, to illustrate how thesubconscious process works. In this case, we see projected into his speech, asubconscious desire to create beauty and art, which goes hand in hand with asubconscious conspiracy then to fund creative endeavors. The leaking out ofunconscious desires takes Freuds structure of psychic processes to a new level ofabsurdity. Here, artists not only find their place in the public sphere by thetransformation of theirtags into obscured or ornamented versions of themselves, but

it is done so subconsciously, without awareness of the meaning of ones actions.Such a commentary can only be directed towards the established system of art itselfwhich is in its own conspiracy of omission to artists and their works of art who are notrecognized as having the value of artists and works of art.

When the natural instinct to be creative is repressed to pursue the accumulation ofcommodities and material wealth the narrator tells us, a dangerous build up ofrepressed artistic desire is generated. Graffiti removaland other subconscious artforms are the natural eruption of these desires and their ubiquitous forms speak tothe passions and dreams within us all.

The desire to inhabit virtual and imaginary worlds may be part of an innate, creativeprotential laying dormant within us. Unless it is given the freedom to find its


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expressive potential in a form that is not only permitted but encouraged, its potentialhas the capacity to turn against the forces that block it. Here, is the videosaffirmation to examine those policing structures internalized within and without theindividual, while encouraging us all to find what passions and dreams may besubconciously but potently laying dormant beneath the surface of our own graffiti tag.

Teresa M. Tipton, 2007

Documents

The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal