Capitalism and Graffiti

Modern day graffiti began with disenchanted youth in America in the late 1960's. It was an underground culture which by the 1980's had spread to Australian cities Melbourne and Sydney. Graffiti challenged the status quo of a "do what your told society." Street art practitioners have been largely responsible for popularization of urban art which to an extent includes graff. The street art movement subconsciously dragged graffiti into mainstream culture. The most popular example being street artist, Banksy, who is widely disrespected in graff culture see Robbo vs Banksy. Graffiti has moved somewhat into mainstream culture subversively through advertising, see examples below. But whatever capitalism does or intends to graffiti, its still one of the few things people can do with free will and absolutely no need for profit.

Wanna play tag?

Urban spaces are designed to look ugly, kept simple and made functional in a way........ if you want everybody in society to be a slave to the economy. What happened to rest and relaxation, our lives are based on productivity. Every fucking day we're told we aren't spending enough. The system in which we live is designed for us to work our arse's off with little reward. We all get sucked into this capitalistic system which doesn't work and operates only because we let it. Graffiti is part of a number of avenues in this world to culture jam society and take a non conformist approach. Don't feel obliged to follow this apathetic, self centered, me me me way of life. Cities make us think that we are the most important species on planet. Oh look what we built, but humans have next to nothing to be proud of. Australians live in a nation which supports freedom of speech but only if you tell them what they want to hear. If you build a dull city, people are inspired to change their community and make it beautiful. Every bodies interpretation of beautiful is different. I hate most things about human civilization and cities suck and drain resources from all around them to make what we think is progress. But this is the society we have and as homo saipens we are social animals and live and communicate together. That's also not to forget cities are places of concepts, and are gradually changing and experimenting with new dynamic ideas and thoughts. This is mostly why graffiti proliferates in urban areas. A city without graffiti would be bland totalitarian piece of shit 

These photo's make many people think, "well haven't they got something better to do?" You mean take a selfie, update their facebook status, post something on twit-head or watch mind-numbing TV. These walls speak out on behalf of the youths of today, graffiti is just a way for them to channelize their anger about this disjointed society.