Graff'(S)lang...

The book Taking the Train produces a record of the great graff artist PHASE 2's styles over the decade from 1972 to 1982, as reproduced in his black book.(1) Each of the ten steps reveals a loss of legibility. At the sixth, I would have to look at the thing for awhile to decode it. At ten, it wouldn't matter how long I looked. In the last few pieces, the name literally seems to be more and more torn up; by the last, it is in shreds. In part it thematizes the physical qualities and in particular the fragility of the paper on which it appears.

In the case of PHASE 2, at any rate, this process is magnificently conscious. Joe Austin quotes him as follows:

I'm absorbing and devouring language in its co-existing state and creating something else with it. . . . The English language isn't much, especially in its current state. By comparison (to Chinese and Japanese) it's like a dot. Why not go beyond that and just create an alphabet or language? You can't put a limit on communication or how one can communicate; you've always got to look further; that's how style expanded in the first place. . . . If they really need Western thought, why don't they examine the Greek myth of the alphabet? Cadmus sowed dragon's teeth and they sprang up as armed men. Greco-Roman letters were . . . (regiments) for an imperial, militarized world - social realities that still curse us. (114)

(C)2007. SEASE Productions/Crispin Startwell. All Right Reserved, All Wrongs Justified...