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)
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