Further comments regarding the possible subversive contribution of a variety of everyday life graffiti in Latin America:

     These muros are both profound and simple at one and the same time. Nay, sometimes even banal each giving that extra edge to the other and this is no abstruse paradox because isn’t the flow of critical everyday life thinking a play-off between obvious simple delights and quick-fire profundity. So what’s wrong in saying "Would that I had artichokes with grapes"  or "Love, happiness and cold beer" before or after making some smart-arsed, snappy comment on Descartes or Galileo that no buttoned-up, hierarchy conscious academic could make?

 

     Both the utterly reactionary ambiences of modern and ultra-post modern times are to the forefront here and sometimes it’s not a pretty sight with aspects of graffiti on the brink of total despair regarding the human condition. Nowadays, despite the MSM’s tendency towards promo-ing religious fundamentalism, God really is Dead in the heads of a sizable proportion of the world’s rapidly expanding population and, no matter what religious bullshit you inherited – Christian, Muslim, Hindu – and what have you, “Life is shit and then you die” as one of the muros says. What’s left is a meaningless life of desperate alienation followed by permanent oblivion despite the omissions within such blank despair of all the progressive mystics (William Blake, etc) from times present and past. In the last few decades via speculative aspects of quantum theorizing now reaching 11 dimensions so far, aspects of mysticism have received some scientific validity but this line of research is still alas, in its infancy. However, one thing’s for certain, the greatest, most wrathful and destructive God remains – the one most humans slavishly bend their knee to countless times daily - and that is the one Marx delineated as “the fetishism of commodities.” Until this neo-religious productivist genuflection is overthrown all life on this planet is hurtling towards quick-ish extinction. What we sensuously experience as a “fall of life” is this excuse for existence, retreating most obviously into permanent none-lived, vapid, aestheticised screen-displayed representation bringing with it little or no enduring satisfaction. It’s a life in absentia dialecticaaly implying the only hope lies in a revolution of everyday life which through its own authentic volition must destroy in its totality a death obsessed capitalist mode of production.

 

       In the early to middle 1990s a haunting graffiti appeared on a wall along Scrubs Lane close by Grenfell Tower and Notting Hill in west London. It read, “Your life is worthless” a sentence that could have come from among these more contemporary muros on display here. Much later we found out the slogan had been sprayed up by Richey Edwards from the Caerphilly based, Welsh post punk group, Manic Street Preachers. Shortly afterwards Richey Edwards most likely threw himself off the Severn Bridge bestriding the Bristol Channel. His body was never found. For sure the knowing graffiti ambience of Notting Hill which we helped create, also found belated expression here having become sadly recuperated through a cash-from-chaos punk rock orientation but along with the desperation bent of the Manics with songs like Suicide Alley also couldn’t divorce itself from the utter reality of that last great plunge into the murky waters beneath. And where are we as human beings at now as aren’t we all collectively – unbeknown to ourselves heading also to those murky beneath our feet? In itself no matter how aspirant, how seemingly successful we appear to be, we are cast adrift as all forms of political economy from Adam Smith, David Ricardo through to Lenin and Keynes have bitten the dust. Or, to put it more abstractly, where the economic constructs of Bolshevism through to autarchic Fascisms and finally world neo-liberalism have had their day; a theses all too briefly outlined by a still neglected Robert Kurz and his cohorts. This is unprecedented and an admittedly awesome inspired leap into the unknown cannot finally be avoided BUT with a happier future than any suicide plunge. In the meantime confronting this ever growing void it’s hardly surprising that severe depressions, self-harming and death cults multiply everywhere. It will remain so until slavish obedience everywhere is broken through a radical world uprising. For sure a tall order but it is still the only game in town. Phew!!

       

       

                 Immigrants  (Ignorants) Out                           When those who rule lose their shame, those

                                                                                                            who obey lose all respect

                        

  The worst poverty is in your mind     Don't mistreat your children giving them everything they ask for

 

           

         The Holy Spirit was an absent father                                 Fascism is cured by dying 

 

                     

    The IDEAL of BEAUTY that involves               Does this city have 300 thousand inhabitants or does it

     SUFFERING corresponds to an                       have the same inhabitant 300,000 times over?

     UNBALANCED society                                                                   YOU BORE ME!!

 

          

                       LUXURY IS VULGARITY                                 You are beautiful, it's society that sucks

 

                         

    Don't burn the forests Sonofabitch                               Educate free women not submissive princesses

 

              

     The problem of closed minds is that they always                      I loved you, shithead!  

      have their mouths open

 

       

    The beautiful is not how we see ourselves but this             ALL NOTES ARE FORGERIES

     fire we have in our hearts

 

           

     There and for evermore we have learned         If the corporate media were to tell the truth we

      that some fires do not ignite by rubbing           would not have to paint walls 

      two sticks together or are put out by

      blowing on them

 

               

                  Reading also burns calories                    ..... CONTINUE FIGHTING, CONTINUE LOVING

   

                       

       Pigs are telling us bankers are not our           We are not forcing you to feel more and more hatred

       relatives.......

 

          

     The thirst for gold will leave us without water               Against all authority except Me Mam

 

          

                       Be Mentally Attractive                        I like bread with avocado and cheese (but it's very

                                                                                       expensive, capitalist cunts)

 

          

                Only dead fishes go with the flow                          Punk is not anarchy nor are drugs rebellion  

 

                   

        Would that I had artichokes with grapes          You are the dialectical negation of the bourgeoisie

 

 

                

                The disappeared will never be deleted                      Don't hate Mondays. Hate your job

 

                 

       God loves the poor - what would it be like if he        Your hands belong to the banks, your soul to 

       hated them!!                                                                       the church, your dignity is in the dust and your 

                                                                                                     life is nothing but misery.......

 

           

     How to stop wanting what you started wanting    I will take you from POVERTY by kissing you RICH

     without wanting

 

          

            In times of war your love is peace                                  It is more violent to obey than rebel 

 

           

     It is rare to come across someone with a mind       You will continue being a slave with or without  

      as provocative as yours                                                qualifications  

 

           

      You don't make a revolution when your ass is        The middle classes don't have whole ideas

      stuck to a writing desk 

 

             

    There are loves so big they justify a revolution     When all is forbidden we will all be delinquents 

 

            

     When everybody thinks the same nobody is         Everyone talks about freedom but if someone         

     thinking much                                                                who is free turns up they do a runner

 

            

      Load the backpack... put on hoodie covering        I think of you and then I am. Don't get rid of me -

     face, and fight                                                                 Descartes. (A play on Descartes' "I think therefore I am)

     

 

          

   ******************