The YNIG Manifesto

            The word graffiti, what does it mean to you? Does it bring you negative thoughts? Would you define it as inspirational? Does it represent your voice and help you express who you are to the world you exist in? Does it mean anything to you at all?

            It should.

            Graffiti is a part of the world we live in. It was here before you were born and it will be here long after your dead. Graffiti is bigger than one person, one crew, one city, one country. Graffiti encompasses the entire globe. This is the world of graffiti; it has been since the cavemen drew animals on walls and has progressed to where it is today.

            Anyone who says they will get rid of graffiti is saying either one of two things; they will be attempting to seize control of the individual’s right to express themselves, or they are not fully educated on the meanings and interpretations of the word graffiti.

The first step in understanding graffiti is the approach of the idea of graffiti, because yes, you have to approach graffiti, otherwise graffiti is always approaching you in some fashion.  Second and the most critical step to take to get to step three, is to understand that everything that exists is multi-layered in its creation. This means that if you only look at it one way, you will never fully understand it. Take your wallet for example, you may “know” your wallet, it holds money, but if you were asked to make that wallet, you would need to know the type of leather, the string used to sew, the design for the pockets and so on. You can take it further on the creation of the leather and historical references for the design. As you see, that simple thing is a bit more complex when you analyze it and break it down.

Now step three is applying that concept to graffiti. One thing you may discover in this process is that graffiti breaks down into forms of expression by a human mind. One writer might be writing as a release from a hard day at home, work, etc. Another writer may be doing it as a self expression piece. Even another writer may be to represent their addition to the underground scene, a world that is mostly overlooked and will remain so as long as people choose to ignore what “it” is.

Continuing with to examine Graffiti we see that it is the easiest form of free speech. As we all know 2-5 year olds usually get a try with crayons or markers. They are immediately told to not do that, and unfortunately there are parents who don’t hand them a piece of paper after the reprimand. Since Graffiti is all encompassing, we need to look at it on the large scale. Everyone has that one “stupid” friend and about five to ten stupid people they know. Now if everyone knows at least one stupid person, that means stupid people know at least one person they consider stupider then them. This basically means there are millions if not billions of stupid people, but you are not one because you are reading this. Stupid can consist of anything someone can call stupid, which is a lot of things on many different levels.  So as the raw form of an actual medium like spray paint or markers will remain because even computers screens can’t replace reality and graffiti can exist without electricity.

One more step in your adventure of understanding, or at least appreciating graffiti, is like anything else that exists—multilayered and all—there is also the conflict factor. If there is bad, somewhere there is good. It works the other way as well, where there is good there will be some bad. Like we discussed previously, anything that exists will have multiple layers. There will be multiple levels of good graffiti and there will be multiple levels of bad graffiti. The idea of good and bad is also left to the interpreter. A city or people in politics have their ideas of what is good and bad. No graffiti equals good and unauthorized graffiti equals bad. While from a writer’s perspective, no graffiti equals oppressed voices, bad. While in their eyes, unauthorized graffiti could equal good for respecting graffiti’s roots or the anti-establishment mentality, it’s in human nature regardless if it is against corporations or governments to parents. Every single one of us has been there at some point in time. Remember there are millions of other individual perceptions, and each one probably not entirely correct. For both the city and the writer, they will never fully agree, but both sides must realize that they both share different views of what is good and bad, right and wrong, and then agree to exist.

            We feel that all sides should share the idea of suppressing ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance can be claimed to get out of a situation, but the situation that is affected by the ignorance will pay the overall price. If the groups mentioned above only need to agree on one thing, this is it: the removal of ignorance and replacing it with the pursuit of knowledge. Thi will benefit everyone, minus the occasional corrupt politician or CEO.

            To those of you who think that only the youth need educated, you are long overdue for your own education. If you are unwilling to learn, you are part of that ignorant crowd. Do know there are ignorant people with very important positions who make very important decisions. The thing to remember is that the human body seems to have problem with is a whole lot of time, they all eventually end up dying. New ideas will fill the spot and as a whole, we should put educated people in those positions to maintain this level of awareness. Yes this starts at the youth level, but no one is exempt. It comes down to us as a society to determine when social change will happen. We can wait for the younger and smarter people to fill the spots or we can just get the people who are there now to take a second to learn.

The YNIG team has made the commitment to educate our youth, our elders and anyone else who has had a misconception about graffiti. Helping people to establish the idea of graffiti art versus graffiti vandalism was our first task of education with the Denver Graffiti Task force. It was accomplished with some grumbling, but by no means is the education portion finished. If you are someone who makes decisions about a group’s actions towards graffiti, please at least take time to learn about what you are making a decision about. We would be glad to discuss this with you or give you ideas to help you find your own forms of expression.

            Whether you are visiting Your Name In Graffiti to support a local artist, gain your first tie to graffiti, check our progress or even hate on what we are doing (we know there will be those of you who will, if you don’t understand why we know this, please re-read this manifesto), understand that we expect every writer, city council member, child, man or woman, young and old to experience life. Doing so in a way that shows you have taken into consideration the layers of life and taken the proper steps to avoid making ignorant decisions. So, what does graffiti mean to you? Or more importantly what can it mean to you?

 

“We know what we believe. We believe in what we know.”

-Your Name in Graffiti

Transcribed by Lemon

 

 

Links to Reading Recommendations

Graffiti World

The art of getting Over

 

Graffiti artists to research

Cope2

Cornbread

Banksy

Taki 183

The list goes on…….