I’m short on time to be posting stuff as usual but here’s a couple of Graff related links I recently received via Gabe at miamigraffiti.com. Hopefully they’ll go some way towards filling the gap…

First up is a 6 minute film of a graff jam back in September of last year where locals were joined by writers from out of town to paint a 10,000 square foot section of the LA Rivers concrete waterway…

Next is an even older, 30 minute docu called Getting Up. Graffiti is big business these days. What started life as an illegal activity has spawned a far more socially accepted component with more and more authorized areas to paint and huge corporate entities like McDonalds and Coca Cola happily adopting the visual element to promote and package their products.

I’m going to avoid controversy and stop short of pushing any personal views but I think most people would agree that for all the advantages of letting people get on with their ideas without the dangers of being caught, the absence of that particular pressure means a large part of the original culture is lost. In regards to peoples motivations for being involved at least.

This film is very much focused around more traditional views of what Graffiti is about and as such, it gets a little over zealous at points. I’ll let you decide for yourself when people are starting to waste words . For me though, this is a reassuring little window into how, regardless of it’s long, ongoing proliferation into the mass media, the cultural roots of this are safe for now.