The Mystery Graffiti Artist

Last week, James Morgan received an anonymous statement from the mysterious figure behind the recent spate of campus graffiti. The following is an extract....

‘The truth must be exposed. The practitioners of ‘détournement’ aim to forge a rift in the fabric of spectacular time and create a debate. Without the necessary capital to prostitute their discourse over billboards and buses, these social lepers stalk the tides of night, sparkling shadowy walls with the syntax of liberation, Enough! The student must no longer believe that their professors will impart them to the ultimate truths of the world. The alienation of the student can only be contested on the ravaged Eden of the social terrain.The practitioners of detournement urge students to continue the pursuit of dialogue and liberation from the self-professed powerful. Our voice of fire shall remain...’

Confused? We certainly were. Fortunately, the very next day, we were contacted again...

What exactly are you trying to do here?

This is an assault on the illusory glamour which this university is decorated in. Most students seem to think that we are studying in a bastion of excellence which will guarantee us a venerated status in life, but increasingly our university is becoming an institute of ignorance. This graffiti is a retaliatory act of detournement.

Pardon? Detournement?

A french word for subversion. The practitioners of detournement aim to subvert the university system and expose the truth behind the illusion.

Ah, bon. And you`re not willing to reveal your identity?

No, this is not about me. Sure, this interview will make me look like I`m trying to enforce my own agenda, but I am not. The idea is to allow people to direct their own consciousness - however they want to. I`m not offering anyone salvation from this ruinous position.

Ruinous position? Aren`t Glasgow`s students quite happy in their ‘delusion’?

Well, you can immerse yourself in a myriad of commodities to anaesthetise yourself but ultimately I think that students today find university alienating. More and more, life seems to be mediated by images. We relate to each other through what kind of clothes we wear, what TV programmes we watch... Equally, I think that students hold their professors in an elevated status. These statements are designed to give people something to meditate on and to encourage dialogue between themselves. I want to find a place for a debate that will resonate and ring in people’s ears. Detournement is my creative tool.

Aren`t there more effective ways to be doing this? Like in the GU debate chamber?

Personally, I think the state of political debate on campus is quite dispiriting: too much emphasis is placed on the quote of the individual. Students criticise the outdated colonialism of Bush and Blair, but they`re reporting the ideas of equally atavistic agents of oppression, whether it be Lenin or Trotsky or Mao. I thought I’d try and drag myself away from this with messages which aren’t linked to some political figure whom I have no connection with. I want to engage a wider audience with statements which are open to interpretation. I don`t want to be authoritarian, I just want to ask questions and allow people to develop their own opinions.

And you don’t think you could achieve this by graffiti-ing the library toilet walls?

No, the location on the front of the building is quite deliberate. The library is becoming a mind cemetery. Students are suffering from a mental menopause.

As in: ‘Pregnant with abortion or mental menopause’. Hmm... the more I study it, the less I learn. Could you explain?

Well I guess it seems to me that our minds are pregnant with abortive thoughts and half truths. We’re consuming more and more of the intellectual commodities of our professors and yet we’re failing to critically assess anything. What exactly are we learning these days? To read? To experience other people’s passions? We’re learning to accept mental bondage and the social and economic subjugation which is going to be imposed on us later in our lives. I want people to ask themselves: whose interest is it serving to write all these essays? What impact are our studies going to have on us? Are they going to liberate us, or just have us scraping our claws in the dust and trying to grind out a living, so we can work a nine hour day, come home, watch Eastenders and fall asleep?

I agree - Eastenders is mince. So what do you think the academics will think of your graffiti?

I think a lot of them are fossils from the sixties. Hopefully they`ll realise that no longer are they the guard dogs of the ancestors to fortune: more and more they are just the sheepdogs watching the flocks of future white collar workers. I have no respect for their authoritarian ‘prestige’. I see it as a form of rigormortis.

And what do you say to people who claim your actions are merely petty vandalism?

Vandalism? (laughs) Whose interest does that definition of vandalism serve? A greater act of vandalism is that I have to resort to spraying things on walls because I don’t have the economic means to plaster my ideas on the side of a bus, or a billboard or in a television campaign. Why is that moral - that you can steal money from people to prostitute ideas on a TV screen? I’m not stealing money from anyone, I’m just scraping what little I have and spraying it on a wall because I don’t have any other means to get people thinking. Illegality? In whose eyes?

The thing is, a lot of people see your actions as one individual trying to impress everyone.

It’s certainly not about being cool and as for individuals, I assure you I am not alone. I am part of a faceless mass rising out of the dark. We are the voice of fire.

So there are more of you on campus. How will we recognise you?

Every time you walk past someone, look in their eyes. If you see any trace of treason, then you`ll know. You might see it in the eyes of someone looking down at the paving stones, thinking ‘one day I’m going to take that and throw it at the windows of my professors.’ People might even recognise me in themselves one day: I am everywhere and in everyone. I am you.

Any more more stories email our very own 'social leper' at:

james@studentunderground.co.uk

(Hmmm yes - try these links instead - Ed)

www.banksy.co.uk
www.vandalsquad.com