Graffiti: Art or Vandalism?

Not very long ago I used to consider graffiti at the same level as Popular Rap Music. My experience of graffiti was limited only to the gang symbols and rude racial words scratched on the buses and metro’s plastic windows, or the very colorful yet meaningless spray drawings on the walls of Montreal.

While staying in Dubai, a place surrounded by disgusting advertisements as big as skyscrapers, I really felt like drawing something on them because a) they would make huge canvases and b) the messages on them were absolutely filthy. Sharing this idea with a friend who just arrived from UK, made him introduce me to BANKSY.

The first visit to his website made me fall in love with his work, at the same time gave me some great laughs. His sense of humor is keen and smart. The quality of his works is absolutely amazing, and his messages are strong. It very much reminded me of some of the 80’s and 90’s Art groups such as the General Idea or Guerilla girls, yet Banksy’s approach is very new to its kind as Internet is his main venue of showcasing his work. But Internet hasn’t been his only medium of advertisement. He has used tricks like writing on bank notes, painting on the Israeli West Bank Barrier, installing modified reproduction of classical paintings in museum, or simply painting on the walls wherever possible. He has remained anonymous (like guerilla girls), while he has gained an international reputation.

Banksy's website:http://www.banksy.co.uk/

Society of control vs. Disciplinary societies

Deleuze recognizes disciplinary societies as an ended system which has given its place to the society of control, a new intellectual way of applying control over the society. This happens according to Deleuze by blending what Foucault calls “closed environment”. Also other methods like specializing, dividualizing are key points in this process.Today every person has a personal password which is recognized by a machine; a machine that works with a program designed for dealing dividually with individuals.

Delueze's notion of the capitalism in the today’s society of control is also very interesting as he calls it capitalism for the product rather than capitalism for the production, as most of the products are made in the third world where there is cheap labor. And this is why marketing have become the core of the financial society, to an extend where Toni Morrison recognize Fascism a marketing for power rather than just an ideology. By making people paying their tax and debts, today were are enclosed to these methods of control through power where we are consumers in form of numbers and statistics.