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Carl Zehr Square renovations
#31
(03-17-2023, 01:38 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I think there are other better solutions to this kind of issue. For example, inviting artists to actually create artwork on the bridge.

Pay more money for the artwork than it costs to clean? Probably worthwhile spending. But when the artworks also just gets covered in shitty tags... not so worthwhile.

An example I saw on UT a while ago (source):

[Image: fOQCwPU.png]
[Image: FOyVe3f.png]

And as an example closer to home, the large mural on the side of Grand Trunk Saloon has tags on it. Not as bad as the above example, but still there.
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#32
(03-17-2023, 02:13 PM)dtkvictim Wrote:
(03-17-2023, 01:38 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I think there are other better solutions to this kind of issue. For example, inviting artists to actually create artwork on the bridge.

Pay more money for the artwork than it costs to clean? Probably worthwhile spending. But when the artworks also just gets covered in shitty tags... not so worthwhile.

An example I saw on UT a while ago (source):

[Image: fOQCwPU.png]
[Image: FOyVe3f.png]

And as an example closer to home, the large mural on the side of Grand Trunk Saloon has tags on it. Not as bad as the above example, but still there.

That is a shame...but taggers are often less willing to deface property that has artwork on it. Even more...when the community feels invested in the artwork and the space there are additional social pressures against those who would deface those things.

Even more...when those in the community who wish to do these things are engaged and provided a venue to express themselves constructively...they obviously stop with the negative behaviours.

I'm not saying it's a silver bullet, and it takes effort to get right, but it's a constructive empathetic inclusive solution, rather than an antagonistic oppressive and exclusive one.

Ultimately there are two problems here...a surface one...the bridge is getting tagged...and a deeper one...there are people in our community who feel so excluded and disconnected as to be motivated to tag parts of our community.
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#33
(03-17-2023, 02:35 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I'm not saying it's a silver bullet, and it takes effort to get right, but it's a constructive empathetic inclusive solution, rather than an antagonistic oppressive and exclusive one.

Ultimately there are two problems here...a surface one...the bridge is getting tagged...and a deeper one...there are people in our community who feel so excluded and disconnected as to be motivated to tag parts of our community.

This is a good way of thinking about it. I think where artwork helps the issue it is probably at least in part the social context as you say, rather than simply the presence of art vs. a blank space.

I’m a bit unclear, however, on what you are referring to when you characterize something as “antagonistic oppressive and exclusive”. I don’t think anybody has suggested any draconian responses in this thread.
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#34
(03-17-2023, 11:33 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(03-17-2023, 10:34 AM)SF22 Wrote: There is a tagger that hits the Lexington bridge over the highway about once a month, and then someone comes in and paints over it, and three days later the same tag is back again. If you look at the bridge, there are tons of grey rectangles in different shades where it's been painted again and again. I know we don't want graffiti everywhere, but how much have we paid to have one stupid word covered up again and again for 2 years straight? They could've left it, and I bet the person never would have tagged it again. Instead, it's now an ongoing battle that costs us money.

(That said, I appreciate if the taggers have at least an ounce of artistic ability with a spray can).

My preferred approach to a situation like this would be to monitor problem locations rigorously and clean them up promptly. So in the situation you mention, after a couple of instances, I would have somebody drive by daily and paint it over right away if they saw it tagged. Of course a lot of up-front investment might be needed to make this happen.

I understand this is how they fixed the problem in the New York subway: they started cleaning all the cars often (I thought I read at the end of the line, but I don’t see how that’s possible; maybe it was at the end of every day) so that tags disappeared. Once the thrill of seeing ones tag out on the system goes away, so does some of the incentive to deface it in the first place. So at first they had to do a lot of cleaning but after a while it was much more manageable.

It would be quite a task to stay on top of it like NYC did. They don't usually have full subway trains painted these days, but it still happens. I think the main reason it slowed down there was the criminal repercussions of doing it as well as a more consistent police presence. People still paint that city in every colour that exists, but trains are hit a lot less these days because it's just not worth the charges if caught.

One thing with combating graffiti is that when you paint over it, they just come back to do it again as we can all witness. It's a cat-and-mouse game. I used to paint it in my youth and was quite a prolific painter in Toronto and Waterloo Region and obviously knew a lot of other artists and understand "what" graffiti is, means and its purpose is. There is reality within the graffiti art scene where they know their work will get covered up, but that just compels them to go do it more. The moment the city "buffs" it, it's hit again. That's why I think it's such a ridiculous waste of time and tax dollars to constantly be sending people out there to paint grey blotches when, as mentioned, that just acts like a fresh piece of canvas for the painters. They'll be back before the end of the week to do it again.

It's one reason why Berlin doesn't really go out of their way to constantly nip it in the bud. First of all, graffiti has been part of the culture of that city for as long as it has existed. It's as Berlin as Currywurst is. The Berlin Wall became famous not just for its ridiculousness as a physical barrier separating East and West Berlin. But also because of the graffiti on it (mostly on the West side, but it was just as colourful in the East albeit less so with the Stasi and all that). Every imaginable surface in Berlin is painted and people accept that because it is part of the culture and urban fabric of the city. Not everyone likes it, but a good portion of Berliners love it. The streets talk, as they say. There's a famous crew there (but who also paint all over the world, on probably every continent sans Antarctica now) called 1UP that has painted...well, everything. They'll tag rappel down apartment buildings in the middle of the day, they'll sneak into train yards/subway tunnels at night or just straight up jam the doors of a subway train at a station and paint the entire thing while people watch on and it'll circle around the city the entire day like that, get buffed at night, then get painted again. Their Instagram gives a good look at their work and the photographer Martha Cooper (famous for photographing the 1970s and 1980s New York City graffiti scene, who could be described as the loving grandma of the graffiti and street art world) recently shadowed them for about a week to photograph them for a new book.

So yeah. It's a truly futile battle. I mean yeah if some taggers filled up a fire extinguisher (a real fun way to paint FYI) and hit the front of Kitchener city hall I could see spending the tax dollars to clean that up, or the side of our LRT. But ripping out new benches to put in new ones or to perpetually paint the city grey (we're already willingly painting/designing buildings grey, do we really need more?) just to have someone do it again in a couple days is just a dumb waste of time and money.

(03-17-2023, 02:35 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Ultimately there are two problems here...a surface one...the bridge is getting tagged...and a deeper one...there are people in our community who feel so excluded and disconnected as to be motivated to tag parts of our community.

Also, this misses the point of graffiti entirely. It has nothing to do with feeling "excluded" or "disconnected".
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#35
(03-17-2023, 04:31 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(03-17-2023, 02:35 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I'm not saying it's a silver bullet, and it takes effort to get right, but it's a constructive empathetic inclusive solution, rather than an antagonistic oppressive and exclusive one.

Ultimately there are two problems here...a surface one...the bridge is getting tagged...and a deeper one...there are people in our community who feel so excluded and disconnected as to be motivated to tag parts of our community.

This is a good way of thinking about it. I think where artwork helps the issue it is probably at least in part the social context as you say, rather than simply the presence of art vs. a blank space.

I’m a bit unclear, however, on what you are referring to when you characterize something as “antagonistic oppressive and exclusive”. I don’t think anybody has suggested any draconian responses in this thread.

I was referring to our current discourse and policy around tagging namely erasing and trying to eliminate it by force and persistence without regard for the reasons why it happens. 

I am trying to be empathetic to how people in that position feel and relate to the broader community. 

Someone tagging, no matter how primal and base it is, is expressing themselves. We may disagree with the method and message but that’s what it is. My opinion is that they likely don’t have another way to feel hear or express themselves in our broader community. Hence they may feel excluded. By erasing their tag that is silencing and erasing their message which I’d argue is oppressive. And being angry about tagging (as I am) is antagonistic. 

Or at least my thinking on it.
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#36
Heh. I'll dive in here while I wait for my pasta to boil as a former graffiti artist and someone who has studied aesthetics.

It's a bit of all of the above, really.

It can be fine art. Well it always has been, but there is a contemporary art movement called post-vandalism, which seeks to describe a very recent aesthetic movement in the fine arts although which has long predated any such term (many, many graffiti artists have transitioned to or have always also been "fine" artists). It aims to bring light to the importance of graffiti as one of the purest and rawest forms of human expressions, up there with singing or tapping some stick on a surface to create "music". It can also be highly performative, as Anne Imhof applied in her 2021 exhibition at Palais de Toyko, Paris, who is best known for expressing the nihilist zeitgeist of the hyper-capitalist modern era we are trapped in (and her performance piece titled Angst II was a great work that expanded on that).

[Image: JGEMQm7.jpg]

It can be socio-political. The messaged painted on the walls of Berlin during the Cold War, the Jewish ghettoes during World War 2, during the Arab Spring or the recent Black Lives Matter or Indigenous protests or when the British forcibly divided Éire and, ultimately, built their so called "peace wall" dividing so called Northern and Southern Ireland into two. Such work seeks to express things that, as previously mentioned, do indeed allow those without a voice to express themselves (reminds me of a tag on a bench at a bus stop at Queen and Charles, which regrettably acts as what I presume is a voiceless homeless persons' despair at losing someone they knew as it says "RIP ____ ________").

[Image: uqcHAmy.jpg]

And ultimately, it is simply human nature. The concept of graffiti dates back thousands upon thousands of years. Amongst the oldest known forms of art human beings have made can, arguably perhaps, be considered a form of graffiti. There are the Blombos Cave engravings to the Timpuseng Cave paintings done tens of thousands of years ago. Perhaps most interestingly, IMO, are the engravings which contain Safaitic, a proto-Arabic language that we have only ever found traces of as actual graffiti scattered around the world, be it in urban centres like Pompeii or on rocks in the middle of the deserts of Syria which was used to communicate things from the availability of resources, directions, expressions of life/death etc.

[Image: v05bRBJ.jpg]

It is all art and human expression and should not be shunned for any reason...well...except to protect capital, I guess? Since that's all most people really care about now. Or unless one just really fails to understand it. But this stuff has been with us for as long as we have been around. There is an entire museum you can visit in Marsilly, France or you can just go wander through the deserts of Lebanon to find traces of this or benches here in Waterloo Region. It might not mean anything to most of you personally but from an anthropological, sociological, political, economic, aesthetic, linguistic etc point of view it all has layers upon layers of meaning. It just depends how open and intelligent you are to understand that, I think. If your first reaction is "oh no a 1200 dollar park bench was tagged, better spend 4000 dollars to rip the thing out and put in a new one in" or can be totally fine with spending tens upon tens of thousands of dollars to paint grey squares on grey walls over grey squares in perpetuity then I am not too sure what to say to that even. What matters more? To draw on Hegel's aesthetic philosophy: that human beings ought to be free and self-deterministic? Or does capital and property (a paradox to maintain) matter more? I suspect most of this forum is fairly centre-right leaning so...I can get hating this stuff or not getting it. If you lean left, then it kind of makes more sense. At least when judged through an economic + political lens. Nobody wants things they rely on damaged beyond repair, but at a superficial level it truly isn't a problem.

Look at it this way: those benches would have worked as benches whether there was some dumb tag on them or not. Instead we spent easily thousands of dollars on new benches and labour costs just to throw them in the landfill, only for them to get inevitably tagged again. Or buffing tags under overpasses or grinding the steel of the side of some meaningless coaxial cable junction box on the side of the road. Total waste of time and money when we have actual tangible problems to solve with very little money to do so. I'd take colourful walls, trains, bus stops, sidewalks etc over giant advertisements for relators, Indian restaurants and stickers for noisy fan repair guys. I'd rather see all of the new Carl Zehr Square full of murals and art...instead of barren concrete as if it's Luitpoldhain.
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#37
(03-17-2023, 09:05 PM)ac3r Wrote: Heh. I'll dive in here while I wait for my pasta to boil as a former graffiti artist and someone who has studied aesthetics.

It's a bit of all of the above, really.

It can be fine art. Well it always has been, but there is a contemporary art movement called post-vandalism, which seeks to describe a very recent aesthetic movement in the fine arts although which has long predated any such term (many, many graffiti artists have transitioned to or have always also been "fine" artists). It aims to bring light to the importance of graffiti as one of the purest and rawest forms of human expressions, up there with singing or tapping some stick on a surface to create "music". It can also be highly performative, as Anne Imhof applied in her 2021 exhibition at Palais de Toyko, Paris, who is best known for expressing the nihilist zeitgeist of the hyper-capitalist modern era we are trapped in (and her performance piece titled Angst II was a great work that expanded on that).

[Image: JGEMQm7.jpg]

It can be socio-political. The messaged painted on the walls of Berlin during the Cold War, the Jewish ghettoes during World War 2, during the Arab Spring or the recent Black Lives Matter or Indigenous protests or when the British forcibly divided Éire and, ultimately, built their so called "peace wall" dividing so called Northern and Southern Ireland into two. Such work seeks to express things that, as previously mentioned, do indeed allow those without a voice to express themselves (reminds me of a tag on a bench at a bus stop at Queen and Charles, which regrettably acts as what I presume is a voiceless homeless persons' despair at losing someone they knew as it says "RIP ____ ________").

[Image: uqcHAmy.jpg]

And ultimately, it is simply human nature. The concept of graffiti dates back thousands upon thousands of years. Amongst the oldest known forms of art human beings have made can, arguably perhaps, be considered a form of graffiti. There are the Blombos Cave engravings to the Timpuseng Cave paintings done tens of thousands of years ago. Perhaps most interestingly, IMO, are the engravings which contain Safaitic, a proto-Arabic language that we have only ever found traces of as actual graffiti scattered around the world, be it in urban centres like Pompeii or on rocks in the middle of the deserts of Syria which was used to communicate things from the availability of resources, directions, expressions of life/death etc.

[Image: v05bRBJ.jpg]

It is all art and human expression and should not be shunned for any reason...well...except to protect capital, I guess? Since that's all most people really care about now. Or unless one just really fails to understand it. But this stuff has been with us for as long as we have been around. There is an entire museum you can visit in Marsilly, France or you can just go wander through the deserts of Lebanon to find traces of this or benches here in Waterloo Region. It might not mean anything to most of you personally but from an anthropological, sociological, political, economic, aesthetic, linguistic etc point of view it all has layers upon layers of meaning. It just depends how open and intelligent you are to understand that, I think. If your first reaction is "oh no a 1200 dollar park bench was tagged, better spend 4000 dollars to rip the thing out and put in a new one in" or can be totally fine with spending tens upon tens of thousands of dollars to paint grey squares on grey walls over grey squares in perpetuity then I am not too sure what to say to that even. What matters more? To draw on Hegel's aesthetic philosophy: that human beings ought to be free and self-deterministic? Or does capital and property (a paradox to maintain) matter more? I suspect most of this forum is fairly centre-right leaning so...I can get hating this stuff or not getting it. If you lean left, then it kind of makes more sense. At least when judged through an economic + political lens. Nobody wants things they rely on damaged beyond repair, but at a superficial level it truly isn't a problem.

Look at it this way: those benches would have worked as benches whether there was some dumb tag on them or not. Instead we spent easily thousands of dollars on new benches and labour costs just to throw them in the landfill, only for them to get inevitably tagged again. Or buffing tags under overpasses or grinding the steel of the side of some meaningless coaxial cable junction box on the side of the road. Total waste of time and money when we have actual tangible problems to solve with very little money to do so. I'd take colourful walls, trains, bus stops, sidewalks etc over giant advertisements for relators, Indian restaurants and stickers for noisy fan repair guys.

The black metal benches are easier to repaint, whereas the cedar ones could not be restored to their former beauty. I have not seen any tagging on any of the black benches on the IHT. There may be some graffiti that can be described as art, but there is a difference between art and vandalism. Art uplifts culture. Vandalism degrades.
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#38
Fortunately, you don't get to gatekeep culture! Whether some young artist wants to paint a "throwup" under a bridge, a more established artist wants to do a detailed piece uptown, a kid wants to scribble on a bench or us Indigenous folk want to throw red paint on white colonial racist settler relics (statues, churches) it's all fair game. That's what culture is. You, me nor anyone gets to decide but the person who creates it. Personal property ought to be respected - i.e. nobody should steal your bike or paint something on your front door - but the streets of a city are but a canvas for anyone. We allowed homeless and activist squatters to "occupy" spaces downtown in the same way we should permit those who wish to express something the ability to do so...free and with self-determination...not governed by abstract rules. If you have no voice, no home, no ability to govern your own self or you just want to goof off and tag things then you can do it. It'll always happen and hopefully we can rethink wasting our money on futile attempts at combating it. I would think that, since the turn of the millennium, we could have put all that money on grey paint and labour etc into more useful things like harm reduction, infrastructure, community housing etc.

Vandalism is of course, what initiated this discussion: someone smashing up a sign for no reason. That has really zero purpose that is not egotistical (they may have felt angry? were drunk? etc). It's a destructive act with no meaning...unless they were against Carl Zerh or gentrification etc. Who knows. Graffiti, regardless of intention, is usually less of an actual intentionally desructive act (When I did it, I never intended to destroy anything. When I painted a huge piece on what is now the Google building probably 15+ years ago it was not to damage it etc) and is a form of some sort of "higher" form of aesthetic expression despite the subjective perception others have of it. Unless it's some 12 year old painting a 8===D on a fence it tends to go slightly deeper, even if it's a "RIP John Doe" at a bus stop. Hope it makes sense.
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#39
(03-17-2023, 09:47 PM)ac3r Wrote: Fortunately, you don't get to gatekeep culture! Whether some young artist wants to paint a "throwup" under a bridge, a more established artist wants to do a detailed piece uptown, a kid wants to scribble on a bench or us Indigenous folk want to throw red paint on white colonial racist settler relics (statues, churches) it's all fair game. That's what culture is.

You are right, except for the phrasing of the bolded portion. It is a part of culture, but not culture in and of itself. Also cultural is levels of "respect" for democracy, private property, public property, and government (constituent) spending. I think that mainstream Canadian positions on these values view both general tagging graffiti and breaking the Carl Zehr sign as vandalism, and inherently destructive.

The intersection of what you and I have both described as cultural components becomes increasingly important in the broader picture of building a livable urban environment. If I'm to accept smaller living spaces and no private outdoor property, then it should be met with a public realm that provides at least equal value. But when I step outside and see how offensive to my senses our urban environment can be, I know we definitely aren't there. Obviously what I'm describing goes way beyond basic graffiti, but it's a small and understandable piece of the puzzle.
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#40
(03-17-2023, 08:09 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I was referring to our current discourse and policy around tagging namely erasing and trying to eliminate it by force and persistence without regard for the reasons why it happens. 

I am trying to be empathetic to how people in that position feel and relate to the broader community. 

Someone tagging, no matter how primal and base it is, is expressing themselves. We may disagree with the method and message but that’s what it is. My opinion is that they likely don’t have another way to feel hear or express themselves in our broader community. Hence they may feel excluded. By erasing their tag that is silencing and erasing their message which I’d argue is oppressive. And being angry about tagging (as I am) is antagonistic. 

Or at least my thinking on it.

Thanks, I appreciate the perspective. It’s the sort of consideration that needs to be included when considering how to respond to a crime problem — it’s more than just finding and punishing the specific offenders or “offenders”.

However, I have to say that I think using the word “oppression” to refer to painting over graffiti is insulting to the victims of actual oppression. I just can’t see it as “oppressive” for a property owner to maintain their property. It might feel oppressive to the person who made the mark, but that doesn’t mean that it actually is oppressive.
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#41
(03-17-2023, 10:42 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(03-17-2023, 08:09 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I was referring to our current discourse and policy around tagging namely erasing and trying to eliminate it by force and persistence without regard for the reasons why it happens. 

I am trying to be empathetic to how people in that position feel and relate to the broader community. 

Someone tagging, no matter how primal and base it is, is expressing themselves. We may disagree with the method and message but that’s what it is. My opinion is that they likely don’t have another way to feel hear or express themselves in our broader community. Hence they may feel excluded. By erasing their tag that is silencing and erasing their message which I’d argue is oppressive. And being angry about tagging (as I am) is antagonistic. 

Or at least my thinking on it.

Thanks, I appreciate the perspective. It’s the sort of consideration that needs to be included when considering how to respond to a crime problem — it’s more than just finding and punishing the specific offenders or “offenders”.

However, I have to say that I think using the word “oppression” to refer to painting over graffiti is insulting to the victims of actual oppression. I just can’t see it as “oppressive” for a property owner to maintain their property. It might feel oppressive to the person who made the mark, but that doesn’t mean that it actually is oppressive.

I mean...I would argue that it is oppression and it is just an issue of severity and impact. But maybe you prefer the word repression? For the life of me, I'm not clear on what the distinction is.

Whichever word you prefer, I think there is a difference between public and private property here. The public property does belong to all of us. Unlike someone's private property we are all entitled to some say in how the public infra works, and I do think not everyone gets the same say in this.

That being said, I doubt taggers have this in mind when they are vandalizing public property, nor do I doubt they would distinguish between public and private property much. But I think it's more of a general experience in society than a specific grievance with specific city policy, as, for example, I might take issue with. But my ability to articulate my grievances more clearly doesn't entirely invalidate other grievances.
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#42
(03-18-2023, 07:41 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: I mean...I would argue that it is oppression and it is just an issue of severity and impact. But maybe you prefer the word repression? For the life of me, I'm not clear on what the distinction is.

Whichever word you prefer, I think there is a difference between public and private property here. The public property does belong to all of us. Unlike someone's private property we are all entitled to some say in how the public infra works, and I do think not everyone gets the same say in this.

That being said, I doubt taggers have this in mind when they are vandalizing public property, nor do I doubt they would distinguish between public and private property much. But I think it's more of a general experience in society than a specific grievance with specific city policy, as, for example, I might take issue with. But my ability to articulate my grievances more clearly doesn't entirely invalidate other grievances.

It’s not a matter of using exactly the right word. It’s that maintaining property by, for example, re-painting it after it has been tagged is not oppression (nor repression, either). That’s all. If that is oppression, then it becomes very difficult to talk about actual oppression.

I think your overall approach of not just trying to eliminate the problem by opposing it but rather understanding why the problem exists and dealing with root causes is good, but it doesn’t help to use serious words like “oppression” to talk about something as mundane as re-painting property. There are people in this world who can’t wear what they want, hold hands together, or fly their flag for fear of severe criminal penalties from the government or “mob justice” from the people around them. Lumping them in with people whose unauthorized alterations to public infrastructure are removed is absurd and insulting.
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