The Insurrection of Signs? Graffiti, Marc Emery and The Culture of the (Non-)Deviant.

Nowadays stencil graffiti can be found anywhere throughout the urban landscape. Made popular by graffiti artists such as Shepard Fairey who is the face behind OBEY stencils are not only our constant companion on our walks through the city, but they have come to be considered 'chic', with Hollywood stars not hesitating a minute to get their hands on 'a Banksy'. The use of spray paint, the claim of public space through subversive imagery and the not unusual rhetoric of violence clearly identify the stencil as part of the countermovement that is graffiti, as a tangible marker of subcultural activity. Yet, the fact that it has been somewhat 'domesticated' and thus become 'mainstream' leads me to question the subversive potential of stencil graffiti and to ask what distinguishes them from as well as what has happened to Jean Baudrillard's idea of graffiti as 'empty signifiers' as laid out in his 1975 essay 'Kool Killer, or the Insurrection of Signs' which was published in his seminal work 'Symbolic Exchange and Death' (1975:79).

I came across the 'Free Marc Emery' stencil on West Hastings Street. It is sprayed onto the sidewalk right in front Vancouver's Scientology Headquarters. The fist in the centre of the image alludes to an inherent violent potential, as do the broken bars. The accompanying marijuana leaf not only hints at Emery himself and the political as well as social agenda he represents – he is the leader of the BC Marijuana Party, a strong cannabis policy reform advocate and currently imprisoned in the United States – but it implies that the entire marijuana subculture is willing to resist and fight for Emery's release as well as figuring itself capable of being victorious in the end. Hence, it is a blatantly political message that is to be conveyed by the stencil. Yet, after having investigated further into the topic, I discovered that this particular stencil was not the creation of an inspired and angry individual, but the result of what might in fact be called a 'marketing campaign'.

Admittedly, Baudrillard had a specific kind of graffiti in mind when writing his essay in 1975, namely graphics made up entirely of names evocative of underground comics, pseudonyms negating any notion of individuality that would derive their subversive power exactly from this anonymity (1975:76). These 'empty signifiers' refused to conform to the urban semiotic overload and countered with semiotic void. They constituted “a new type of intervention in the city, no longer as a site of economic and political power, but as a space-time of the terrorist power of the media, signs and the dominant culture” (1975:76). Since in a world in which meaning is key the idea of meaninglessness seems unbearable, such empty signifiers are likely to cause distress and irritation. How does the 'Free Marc' stencil conform to the idea of graffiti as the tangible marker of emotional outburst as well as uncontrollable and juvenile, so to speak, expressiveness?

The 'Free Marc' graffiti is obviously no such 'empty signifier'. It does have a message. Yet, that alone does not necessarily denies it its subversive character. As Baudrillard notices: “There are also frescoes and murals in the ghettos (...) Moreover, they all focus on political themes, on a revolutionary message (...) In any case, it is a matter of a counter-culture” (1975:82–83). What is much more interesting and significant in the context of my analysis is the fact that the stencil was created by the same group of people that operates the 'Free Marc' website and that started the repatriation campaign. It is meant to provide Emery's supporters with an 'authentic' method of protesting. Rather than thinking for themselves, his fans and advocates are being told how to appropriately voice their opinions. Since graffiti as a medium is believed to express a person's individuality while at the same time questioning the very notion of the individual – “When you step into this subculture, you are expected to leave all traces of 'real-life' on its doorstep” (Macdonald 2005:312) – as well as to subvert any kind of structure, one might ask if the 'Free Marc Emery' stencil and the 'industry' that has evolved around it, can still be considered 'graffiti'. Can we call this campaign a form of 'protest'? 

Personally, I sense an inherent contradiction between the medium's very own character, the group's agenda and its way of going about getting its message across, insofar as the organization behind 'Free Marc' makes use of graffiti's subversive character in a way that is deliberate taking advantage of its scope and using a type of graffiti that is almost aesthetically pleasing. Consequently, it loses some of its rebellious potential, for the aestheticization of the urban landscape does not really seem to be part of graffiti's agenda if it intends to be subversive. Furthermore making us, as potential graffiti artists, aware of the fact that we might face a fine for spray painting the stencil – there is a list '75 Fun Things You Can Do To Help Free Marc' on the group's website that not only provides people with a variety of ideas like for example 'Writing and performing a song on Youtube', but that also assesses these different 'forms of protest' on 'risk', 'effectiveness' and 'cost' – the group operates within the realm of today's consumer culture and lets itself be guided by economic considerations. Interestingly enough, the 'Free Marc' stencil also by virtue of its very locality reaches out instead of trying to create some kind of sub- and counter-cultural, exclusive discourse. It does not remain within a 'graffiti-prone' area, but being close to such localities it hints at the acceptance of, or in other words the increasing 'obliviousness' to graffiti. Hence, the fact that it is right in front of the Scientology HQ – something that might actually be seen as particularly offensive – only underlines this widespread 'failure to recognize the graffiti as potentially dangerous'. At the same time this stresses the increasing appropriation and thus 'taming' of graffiti.

Surely, the stencil draws on a dynamic and robust visual language largely identified with graffiti (Macdonald 2005:317–318). Yes, by creating points of encounter the stencil and the group behind it, do confront the general public. And, indeed, the person who actually spray paints the stencil does remain invisible: Due to the fact that the stencil itself can be used by anyone who accesses the website it is impossible to ascribe the actual graffiti to a particular person. Nevertheless, it is not this 'reclaiming of public space by the individual' that led the initiators to launch this campaign. This particular stencil participates actively in the public discourse; it creates it in fact for Marc Emery by taking advantage of the public's general acceptance for stencils.

The graffiti in this case is no longer Baudrillard's 'empty signifier', but a tamed and socially acceptable version of it. Unlike 'traditional' graffiti such as tags or large murals, stencils are a practice that combines technology and art, ingenuity and structure, expressiveness and self-restriction. So if this lack of subversive power can be attributed to the stencil in general – as the tag's well-behaved sibling – or to the way it is being used here, we cannot tell. It is, however, striking that a subculture making use of another subculture's visual language – the graffiti scene – in front of a third 'fringe group', does not create any controversy whatsoever. On the contrary, it prompted me to write an essay about the lack of today's graffiti's undermining potential. Maybe that is due to the stencil's aesthetic quality or because we have become used to the signs – subversive or not – surrounding us. Language and signs are part of our physical environment (Pennycook 2009:304). 

Graffiti, then, is not only the marker of a certain activity and a medium to express oneself, but something that guides us in the way we perceive and navigate the urban space; something we have become accustomed to; a medium readily available to everyone who feels the need to make use of it.

References Cited

Baudrillard, Jean

1993 Symbolic Exchange and Death. Iain Hamilton Grant, trans. London: Sage.

'Free Marc Emery' Website, accessed February 5, 2011, http://freemarc.ca.

Macdonald, Nancy

2005 The Graffiti Subculture: Making a World of Difference. In The Subcultures Reader. 2nd edition. Ken Gelder, ed. Pp. 312–325. New York: Routledge.

Pennycook, Alastair

2009 Linguistic Landscape and the Transgressive Semiotics of Graffiti. In Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery. Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter, eds. Pp. 302–312. New York: Routledge.

Jai Ho: A Tamil Community Event in Florida, a San Francisco Living Room and the Meaning of the Ritual

At the 2009 annual meeting of the Tamil community in Tampa, Florida, Karan Khokar and Divya Ikara together with a group of background dancers were performing a dance, more precisely they were doing a dance they themselves refer to as the Jai Ho. How come we know about it? The entire choreography is up on Youtube.

Jewish-German cultural theorist Walter Benjamin was one of the first to realize: The aura is dead. Due to the development as well as refinement of technologies such as photography and film at the turn of the 19^th century, the original – formerly the epitome of what is today known as the wobbly concept of 'authenticity' – ceased to exist. A large number of reproductions means no original. No original equals loss of tradition. These were Benjamin's simple and easily comprehensible equations laid out in his 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2005:2–3). While it is certainly true that since 1936 artworks or objects of cultural and social significance (and the term 'objects' is not limited to material culture but used as in 'possible objects of enquiry' and thus comprising for example songs or dances as well) have been widely reproduced, it is definitely worth investigating further into the consequences anticipated by Benjamin as well as rethinking some of his main arguments.

The aura is dead. Or is it? According to Benjamin, the aura is the specific quality radiating from the work of art, or almost anything for that matter, as long as it is distant (2005:3). Furthermore, the existence of an aura is closely connected to the idea of the ritual (2005:4). Only if the object in question is unique and embedded in some sort of ritual, can we speak of it as 'possessing an aura'. Admittedly, modern-day technologies rather aggressively promote artworks, dances, songs, films, etc. instead of withdrawing them from the public in order to prevent their 'aura' from fleeting away. Thus modern mass media assure the viewer immediate access and a close, intimate, often almost physical relationship to these 'objects'. From this Benjamin deduces that while its traditional cult value decreases, the work's exhibition value is heightened (2005:4). Among the consequences are the emergence of what Guy Debord so aptly described as the Society of Spectacle, and cultural demise.

In a small San Francisco living room a Caucasian couple – Rachel and Mick Hagen – is dancing to a song. Jai Ho. It is the same song the Tamil dance ensemble performed to but it is not the same dance. There is a TV screen to the couple's right-hand side. Twenty seconds into the clip, we begin to notice that their movements resemble the ones done by the actors onscreen. Why are the Hagens as well as the Tamil musical ensemble doing the dance and how do the two YouTube videos relate to Benjamin's thoughts on aura and tradition?

Both groups, the Western couple and the Tamil dance ensemble, reference a song-and-dance sequence featured at the end of the Hollywood movie Slumdog Millionaire. The 2008 film draws on the Bollywood tradition of singing and dancing as an integral part of cinematic practice. Yet, it is also grounded in a very different tradition, namely Western Blockbuster cinema, and thus indeed a hybrid on a variety of levels. In Bollywood cinema it is rather common that song-and-dance sequences become popular after having been featured in films (Novak 2010:48). Taken out of their original contexts, reworked and made to fit new situations, these segments are referenced over and over again. While this practice used to be far less common in Western popular culture, it seems that the 'Bollywood way' has finally reached the other side of the world, thus providing us with an intriguing case study to start rethinking Western notions of originality and authorship. What exactly then do these clips tell us about the global flow of culture and the destiny of aura in this context? I am arguing that these videos develop a life and thus history of their own, for aura in this context is created anew.

Ironically, this aura is created by virtue of reproduction. That this is actually not as great a contradiction as one might think is shown by the fact that the original – and thus aura in the first place – only comes into being the very moment the replica is made, for without the reproduction there is no original. The original never exists on its own. Moreover, going back to the Jai Ho YouTube videos, we see that an entirely new ritual evolves. The ritual in this case is surely no longer performed by the 'originating community' or a specific religious group, i.e. by an exclusive circle of people, but by people all over the world, the consumers of popular culture imagery. Facilitated only by reproduction, it is the ritual of the constant reenactment of consumerism and self-stylization. So even if we follow Benjamin in saying that the authority of the original is degraded by the reproduction and that this implies a detachment from tradition, I do not see why we could not also say that at the same time a new history begins – starting precisely with the reproduction. One might argue then that it is YouTube as a medium or a media platform that not only initiates this ritual of 'putting oneself out there', but that maintains itself by the very ritual it created. Consequently, we might say that wherever there is a reproduction there must be an 'aura' of sorts. It is precisely due to the very character of modern-day technologies that aura is produced. In this context it is not about the original any longer, but about the new ritual and its contribution to and assistance in the process of meaning-giving. Due to the fact that repeatability and reproducibility are intrinsic to mediums such as film in general, photography and YouTube videos, their proliferation cannot rip the original off its aura: There hardly is an aura to begin with.

For those not persuaded by this and still convinced that the Slumdog Millionaire version constitutes the original, one question remains: What about the actual 'content' of the video, its 'meaning'? Should not the author's 'intention' and the film's specific qualities not account for it being the original? Looking at the Tamil adaptation of Jai Ho, one might argue that the initial content is to a certain extent carried over and therefore important: The 'Indian' struggle for a decent living and life per se vividly depicted in the movie might be something the Tamil community in Tampa is still aware of. The fact that it is a Hollywood movie tackling these issues might then either arouse feelings of pride or disapproval in which case the 'tamilization' can be seen as an act of reappropriation. It is precisely this act of giving meaning and relevance to oneself which leads us back to the idea that it is not original which generates the ritual or that is important. It is the repetition that is significant, the formalist structure itself is what needs to be preserved for some reason or another; an idea that is also suggested and backed up by the performance of the San Francisco couple. While they may be copying the exact Jai Ho dance sequence, I would argue that it is just about the act of creating a video, for the sake of being youtubed. What if it is the specific characteristics of the medium that make it intriguing and attractive? The new ritual prompts the creation of a new aura, an aura that helps the medium maintain itself.

Following this one might say that YouTube videos are significant insofar as they provide support or guidance. They help establish some kind of temporary tradition one might inscribe oneself into. 75 years after Benjamin's essay people have become more and more mobile; our lives have become increasingly intertwined with the media – maybe in an attempt to find some sort of stability in the constant flux of information we call the 21^st century. However, we see deterritorialization, to introduce a term most prominently used by Arjun Appadurai (1996:49), not only with regards to people, also in terms of customs and knowledge. Accordingly, Benjamin's exhibition value has certainly become one of the leading paradigms of our times. We watch movies, TV series and news broadcasts over and over again; we get back to old photographs, edit and enhance them; constantly analyze ourselves and scrutinize the actions of those around us. What Benjamin saw as a process of self-alienation has therefore also brought us more together. It is an inclusive ritual that has come to govern our lives.

These developments also lead, as Appadurai argues, to an increase in imagination (1996:53). In times of rapid change people are confronted with a wider variety of role models they might choose from. Through the constant re-representation of a rich, ever-changing store of possible lives our imagination is stirred (1996:54). This 'ability to imagine' is a new and crucial social practice that has become necessary if one was to navigate successfully through the flood of images characterizing our times. Therefore we cannot tell what exactly these people are imagining when doing the Jai Ho dance. Why would Rachel and Mick Hagen picture themselves as the protagonists of Slumdog Millionaire? Maybe they are rather imagining the audience at the other side of the screen, i.e. us and how we might be reenacting their performance? Why does the Tamil community of Tampa, Florida take on and modify Jai Ho? Is it an expression of the close relationship still maintained to their mother country India? Is it an act of resistance by means of reappropriation? In any case, both videos reveal how the media exert influence by suggesting possibilities and connecting as disparate parts of the world as San Francisco and Mumbai.

Useful in this context is Appadurai's term 'ethnoscape' since it alludes to the fact that what is perceived as representation, projection and imagination always hinges on the perspective from which one looks at these things (1996:33). Hence, it does not really matter what exactly our YouTube celebrities are imagining or trying to get across, for there is a large number of possible perspectives, all equally valid. What does matter, however, is the very fact that they are doing it, that they are seeking publicity, thereby perpetuating the ritual. This leads us back to Benjamin. We have come full circle – but of course we have not come to an end, for the ritual never ends.

References Cited

Appadurai, Arjun

1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Benjamin, Walter

2005 [1998] The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Andy Blunden, trans. UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television, http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm .

Karan Khokar and Divya Ikara – Jai Ho Dance, Tamil Sneham, Tampa, Florida. Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqWkFMoLocM .

Novak, David

2010 Cosmopolitanism, Remediation, and the Ghost World of Bollywood. Cultural Anthropology 25(1):40 –72.

Slumdog Millionaire Dance – Jai Ho. Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7AuQKFlhXI .

Globalization and Media: The Dizziness of 'Close Distance'

In his essay “Culture, Globalization, Mediation” William Mazzarella is concerned with the relationship between processes of mediation and globalization. Trying to shed light on mediation as a key component of social life – integral to any kind of interaction – as well as by investigating the media's role within globalization, Mazzarella proposes a new and less restricted understanding of the 'medium' that allows for the conclusion that in fact mediation can be encountered wherever people interact with one another (2004:345–346).

This notion is based on his idea of the ambiguity of all media: The medium is not only the material framework that facilitates as well as restricts social practices, but it “is also a reflexive and reifying technology” (2004:346). Hence, providing us with “external representations” (2004:346) of ourselves and letting us construct and imagine ourselves as well as others in the first place, media constitute a tool that we can use and that at the same time utilizes us. The medium's implied constant oscillation between absence and presence, its direct interference with 'culture' – something that is intensified by globalization as will be shown below – leads Mazzarella to understand mediation as a social practice utilized by people every day. It is due to these premises that Mazzarella suggests a rethinking, a broadening, of the traditional notion of the medium, insofar as he likes to acknowledge the 'media potential' of cultural practices such as performance and thus go beyond the term's merely technical implications (2004:345). By blurring the distinction between medium and culture, he attempts to promote their coconstitution (2004:353), for the medium itself is deeply cultural and culture is always the product of mediation.

Mazzarella's main interest, however, lies in identifying an inherent contradiction in how anthropology as an academic discipline deals with mediation: On the one hand is has been stressed how modern life is increasingly mediated. On the other hand mediation has often been denied its impact, for advocating the idea our lives being the result of processes of mediation would deny the possibility of objectivity, truth and hence disrupt notions of security and 'authenticity' that is, despite efforts to unmask its constructed character, still a concept deeply-rooted within society in general as well in the academic psyche in particular (2004:347, 354).

Thinking globalization and mediation together Mazzarella makes us aware of the fact that due to globalization the overall level of mediation has increased while he is also highlighting that there has never been such a thing as a 'true' and objective, immediate access to the world. As a consequence of globalization many anthropologists switched their focus of study from the global stage to the small-scale “production of locality” (2004:346). While studying other people's practices of representing culture, however, they came to notice that as a result of ongoing processes of globalization people in various parts of the world were facing and confronting the same issues, something that was believed to be no longer the case (2004:347).

Mazzarella's idea that due to globalization mediation's inherent dialectical doubleness – its close distance (2004:348) – comes to the fore as a crucial factor in how we envision ourselves as well as that processes of mediation are at the very root of what we understand as globalization, is very well illustrated by online software applications such as 'Skype' allowing users all over the world to get in contact with each other. While such programs evoke the impression of immediacy, they also increase the distance between their users and make them aware of various differences. The fact that these differences are no longer to be perceived as 'cultural', but as something that needs to be recognized as a function of all processes of mediation (2004:360), is something we can take away from Mazzarella's article and attribute to his effort to illuminate how globalization impacts on mediation by means of readdressing the tensions between the local and the global and the issue of close distance.

References Cited

Mazzarella, William

2004 Culture, Globalization, Mediation. Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 345- 367.  

Oblivion is Bliss: Haiti and the Media

What if international humanitarian aid was no good? Imagine the supposedly 'non-ideological' ideology of humanitarian engagement and charity would in fact aggravate the misery it is supposed to redress and relieve.

According to the article 'Alms Dealers – Can You Provide Humanitarian Aid Without Facilitating Conflict?' written by Philip Gourevitch and published in the New Yorker in 2010 the modern-day humanitarian aid business came into being as a consequence of the Nigerian civil war, the first war ever to be televised (2010:102). Being broadcasted into people's homes all around the globe, the images of dying people and a country struck by war raised sympathy, leading people abroad to raise and donate money. But did this also lead to the prolongation of war and misery wherever humanitarian missions and the media had come to help and inform, shed light on certain events respectively?

Recalling what happened in Nigeria, one could argue that the media were complicit in the outbreak and spread of cholera in Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake that struck the country early in 2010. Stressing the point that cholera was brought to Haiti by foreign humanitarian aid workers – people who only decided to go to Haiti because of what they had seen on TV, who were influenced by the mediated images that reached their native countries – many now believe that it is the media that are to be blamed. On the other hand, one might say that nobody would have noticed anything about the earthquake in the first place if it had not been for the media's coverage. The media introduced the world to what had happened in Haiti and by virtue of their very own characteristics such as temporal as well as spatial 'immediacy' or the capability to facilitate extensive surveillance, laid the foundation for future engagement. According to the World Health Organization (WHO)

“a multidisciplinary approach based on prevention, preparedness and response, along with an efficient surveillance system, is key for mitigating cholera outbreaks, controlling cholera in endemic areas and reducing deaths” (WHO, Fact Sheet No. 107).

This implies that in fact a media-led approach – an approach thus largely dependent on what many believe to have created the plague in the first place – is key to mitigating the tragedy, for only they could possibly provide the infrastructure needed to raise awareness and to start taking action.

But what exactly are we referring to when talking about 'the media'? Do we mean the big broadcasting companies? Are we talking TV and radio coverage? Should we not be thinking about the mediated quality of life itself and be dealing with the fact that mediation is an integral part of what we are, of our very existence? How could we, facing this truth, still legitimately try and track back everything that has happened in Haiti to the CNN's or BBC's coverage? This is not to say that I am of the opinion that the media should not concern themselves with solving larger problems in society, for it is these that generate the need for and condition the development of any new medium in the first place. Media cannot not be dealing with social issues. Literally mediating between people they are genuinely social. As Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan notes: Nothing can be communicated outside of media (1994:7). Consequently, an approach that disregards or questions, even condemns any kind of media involvement in social interaction, can be nothing but false and short-sighted. McLuhan's famous phrase 'the medium is the message' further implies that the characteristics of our perception and imagination become the characteristics of our reality. From this one can infer that there are multiple realties depending on which media exactly one refers to. 

Admittedly, one might argue that McLuhan refers to different media, as in 'TV', 'radio', 'print' etc. analyzing how the specific characteristics of such media influence the message they are trying to convey. Nevertheless, what we are looking at in terms of the Haitian cholera epidemic are to a great extent exactly these influences of television and how this relatively young medium determines and shapes the worldview of those making use of it. Being aware of the fact that the medium itself is a mere construct, it is just another medium impacting on the way we see things, we still have to admit that its implications are rather real. In my opinion, it is this prevailing uncertainty in how to approach and understand the media coverage and the media in the Haitian case that leads people to either idolize or condemn them and that, interestingly enough, by means of either of these puts a great deal of agency into the hands of a small 'subdivision' of media overlooking the fact that there is much more to the 'media', than just the evening news and failing to think about other and larger processes of mediation that might have led to the outbreak or determined the way it was reported on.

Since I am of the opinion that it is just too easy to either idolize or condemn 'the media' for their approach to the cholera epidemic and since I also believe that there is no such thing as a monolithic entity that is 'the media', a dark and evil 'other', I propose a view that first of all and before trying to judge media activity learns to acknowledge and recognize the mediated character of everyday life itself, to truly 'see' the “collide-oscope of interfaced situation” (McLuhan 1967:10) we are part of. If it was not for the media we would not know anything about Haiti or the earthquake. Neither would we know about the subsequent spread of cholera. If it was not for the 'New Yorker' and Gourevitch's article we would not know anything about the emergence of the humanitarian aid either. What if we, inspired by Gourevitch's article, put an end to the humanitarian aid business, to news coverage focussing on war and natural disasters abroad? Would he be blamed for it?

References Cited

Gourevitch, Philip

2010 Alms Dealers: Can You Provide Humanitarian Aid Without Facilitating Conflicts? The New Yorker, October 11: 102–109.

McLuhan, Marshall

1967 The Medium is the Message. New York: Bantam Books.

McLuhan, Marshall

1994 Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

World Health Organization, Cholera Fact Sheet No. 107, accessed January 16 2011, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs107/en/.