Catherine Yass talks about filming the West Bank wall

     Looking back, it's hard not to notice how often British artist Catherine Yass has set up her camera to face walls, capturing surfaces spotted by stains in a meat market ("Stall," 1996), scratched with graffiti in a prison ("Cell," 1998), obscured by steam in a Baden-Baden spa ("Baths," 1998), or decorated by tiles in the Prague underground ("Metro," 2001). These works were part of a larger investigation of empty architectural spaces and were shown as transparencies mounted on light boxes, each image a composite of two photographs taken moments apart. Yass's interest in disrupting photographic time later inspired her films such as Descent, 2002, which was shot from a crane being lowered down the side of a building in London's Canary Wharf. Yass inverted each frame of the film so viewers felt they were being dangled upside down. As the camera dropped, it captured another skyscraper directly opposite in the early stages of construction, the slow downward motion of the film transforming this new monument of globalized banking into a ruin.

     Perhaps it was inevitable that this concern with architecture and power would lead Yass to film the wall being built on the West Bank. But in taking on this structure she set herself a more difficult task than ever. How to represent a barrier whose meanings are so different for the people living on either side? How to image a construction whose significance could change at a moment's notice? What would it mean to tackle so obviously controversial a subject, one that has already been the subject of numerous other artworks? (A documentary about the wall had actually been projected onto it during the Ramallah film festival of 2004.) Most important, as a nonresident making a work in Israel/Palestine, was it possible for Yass to confront the political situation with any authenticity?

     In 2003 the British Council invited me to Israel for a research trip. There was no pressure to make work, but as soon as I saw the wall I realized I could not ignore it, even though I was taking on something enormous and complex. My background is Jewish, and I had traveled to Israel a few times before. I feel oddly connected to what happens there, as if I am somehow responsible. The wall made an immediate impact on me, in terms of both its political significance and my personal response. It made me think of internal walls, the emotional barriers that arise between individuals. I think of it as a physical manifestation of people's inability to see around corners and negotiate their way past blockages. I felt I could only speak from my own position, so I tried to develop a personal language and perspective in the way I made the film and how I addressed the reality of the wall. I didn't set out to make a documentary.
     
     I decided to film from the Israeli side and to think about what Israel is doing to itself, as much as what it is doing to other people. But while researching for the film, I realized that it is not easy to know which side you are on. In areas where the wall is built in sections and not joined up, you can easily go back and forth and you often can't tell whether you are in Israel or Palestine. This makes it seem like the wall is as much about staking out territory as it is about defense. The houses and landscape are alike on both sides. Arab people live all around it, and in many places the wall cuts through communities, sometimes even splitting up families. There is also disagreement about which territory the wall is located in. Often it crosses over the Green Line, the internationally recognized border determined in 1949. I couldn't get insurance for my crew or equipment in these areas, which indicates the confusion within Israel about where the boundaries of the country actually lie.The work consists of five sections, each three to ten minutes long, all filmed from a camera mounted onto a car moving at walking pace--the pace at which most people encounter the wall. The sections correspond to actual sections of the wall, since it does not yet exist as a single uninterrupted line. Some sections are filmed with the camera moving along the wall, some with the camera going toward it in deep perspective. Each section is filmed in one take, the first frame showing the beginning of a particular section of the wall and the last frame showing its end. The time it takes to travel along each section is a kind of measure of the length of the barrier. By seeing all the sections, you begin to grasp the distance it spans.
     
     At the beginning and end of all but one section of the film, you get a glimpse of the landscape and towns beyond the wall. The wall almost fills the frame, so you only see the other side as a sliver over the top or along one side. By limiting the viewer's field of vision the image re-creates what the wall itself does: It cuts off the view. It blinds you to what is happening on the other side, preventing any dialogue or negotiation. There are no people in the film, only occasional Israeli Army jeeps with tinted windows. The presence of people would locate the film in a particular time, letting you imagine that it's only relevant to the people there. Instead, you are left on your own with the wall. Your viewpoint moves with the camera, so there is no reassuring sense of difference between you and the lens. It's like you are trapped in someone else's vision and can't escape the relentless structure of the wall. Its blankness is like a dead end, blocking any communication or progress. The film is silent, because silence, like the absence of people, isolates you as the wall does in real life.
     
     The film is projected directly onto a wall, not a screen. In the same way that the wall in the film almost fills the frame, the projection fills the wall, the viewer's whole field of vision. The wall in the film becomes like a screen the viewer can project onto. During the film you begin to think of other walls, both physical and internal. One thing the wall reminds me of is some of the sculpture and Land art of the 1970s. It's ironic that these structures were built quite idealistically, and now their aesthetic has come back but is connected to other ideologies. It's disturbing how seductive the modernist aesthetic of the wall can be. It reminded me of seeing the pyramids in Mexico and finding out that these amazing structures were used for human sacrifice.
     
     I filmed on Super 16 film to convey how the wall stretches across the landscape and to pick up the textures in the concrete. It's shown on a DVD loop, which just goes on and on. Film gathers dust and a history as it is projected, but DVD has an interminable quality and coldness--like the wall. This wall is present now. There is no nostalgia about it.

At War With São Paulo’s Establishment, Black Paint in Hand

     SÃO PAULO, Brazil this mega-city’s authorities have waged war for years against what they call “visual pollution,” banning billboard advertising, demolishing abandoned skyscrapers and planning to raze concrete eyesores like the elevated highway known as the Big Worm. But, the battle to clean up the sprawling cityscape has become intertwined with a deeper social conflict between Brazil’s haves and have-nots, where the angry and disenfranchised lash out in a form of expression unrivaled in other cities. Taking action against the establishment, young people arm themselves with black paint, rollers, spray cans and no shortage of personal daring. Their target: the landscape that society cares so much to recover. “We practice class warfare, and there are casualties in war,” said Rafael Guedes Augustaitiz, 27. “They compare us to barbarians, and there may be a little truth in that.”

     Mr. Augustaitiz is part of a subculture that executes a form of graffiti described by one scholar as an “alphabet designed for urban invasion.” It nearly envelops some of São Paulo’s government buildings, residential high-rises, even public monuments, with lettering eerily reminiscent of Scandinavia’s ancient runic writing.  The most daring practitioners risk their lives, scaling building facades at night to paint their script at the crests of smog-darkened skyscrapers. Some have fallen to their death from terrifying heights. Their graffiti, called pichação, from the Portuguese verb “pichar,” or cover with tar, reflects the urban decay and deep class divisions that still define much of São Paulo, a city with a metropolitan population approaching 20 million. It is just one reminder of the social ills that Brazil’s economic boom has so far failed to resolve, and may perhaps even be accentuating, despite recent strides in reducing income inequality.

This month, Brazilians were stunned by clashes in São José dos Campos, an industrial city 50 miles from São Paulo, when the police stormed a squatter settlement, expelling about 6,000 residents from the area.  Fury over that episode and the violent clearing by security forces this month of crack addicts from a part of downtown São Paulo called Cracolândia produced a fierce protest last week against the city’s mayor, Gilberto Kassab. His car was pelted with eggs as he fled.  “It’s positive to see others reacting with indignation against our elite,” said Djan Ivson Silva, 27, a pichação gang leader. “We take our risks to remind society that this city is a visual aggression to begin with, and hostile to anyone who is not rich.” Retaining that edge is essential for self-described subversives who draw their underground legitimacy in part from their clashes with the mainstream art world.  Even as São Paulo’s other forms of graffiti acquire some respectability as street art, shown in galleries here and abroad, pichação (pronounced pee-shah-SAO) remains defiantly outside such conventions, inviting visceral reactions from those weary of its relentless scrawl across the cityscape.  “They make buildings look grotesque and walls look disgusting,” said Telma Sabino, 45, a secretary, echoing the anti-pichação sentiment of many other Paulistanos, as residents of this city are called.  Pichação does, however, fascinate scholars of urban culture, who have studied it since it emerged here in the 1980s. They say that it differs remarkably from other forms of urban graffiti around the world inspired by New York’s colorful lettering from the 1970s.  

     Often applying black paint with rollers instead of using costlier spray paint, the graffitists were influenced by the record sleeves of foreign bands like Iron Maiden and AC/DC, themselves influenced by gothic lettering and Viking runes, said François Chastanet, a French scholar and author of a book on pichação. The result was coded writing with vertically tilted black letters, often indecipherable to nonpractitioners. Mr. Chastanet says he marvels at the capacity of such an illegal lettering system to eventually occupy such vast swaths of a metropolis.  “For residents of São Paulo, it may contribute to blight, but we have to see that in its massiveness it is an urban wonder,” Mr. Chastanet said.  Pichação gangs often consist of about 10 members, mostly young men from São Paulo’s poor periphery, who paint short phrases, like “Poetic Terrorism,” or their own names, like “Zé.” Their tags rarely carry explicit political statements. Sometimes the painters just scrawl the name of their gang, like “Crypt.” These groupings actually organize in broader associations called labels, which can encompass as many as 50 different gangs.  The labels, with names like “The Filthiest Ones” or “Registered Under the Penal Code,” compete against one another to paint coveted buildings. Their street brawls are violent and can result in deaths. Such wars, as they are called by those who engage in them, can last years.  Pichação gangs do not consider themselves graffitists at all, since colorful graffiti in their view at least is a lesser form of expression, easy to do on street level and often co-opted by the commercial art scene.  Some in the art world here find it hard to grasp pichação’s appeal, especially after gangs gained prominence when they stormed into the São Paulo Art Biennial and Choque Cultural, a prominent gallery for street artists, and defaced original works.  Other critics of pichação question whether the practice is aspoliticized as some gang leaders say it is, or rather an empty form of expression simply degrading the city, instead of exploring new ways of improving it.

     A 2009 documentary, “Pixo,” explored the world of these high rollers. The director João Wainer accompanied gangs that scaled high-rises from the outside without climbing gear. “I was scared that one of them would fall to their death in front of me,” Mr. Wainer said.  None perished then. But the spread of the graffiti form from São Paulo to other Brazilian cities pichação even appeared last year on the arm of Rio de Janeiro’s landmark Christ the Redeemer statue has resulted in new accounts of such mishaps. In Campinas, a city near São Paulo, an 18-year-old man died from head injuries after falling from a building where he was applying pichação. In another episode in the city of Belo Horizonte, a night watchman fatally shot a man who reportedly was preparing to paint a shed.  Society spills few tears over such deaths. But in a development that would shock many Paulistanos, and even some in the pichação scene itself, the foreign art world is starting to embrace the practice. One gang here has even been invited to attend the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.  That is too much for Luiz Henrique do Vale Salles, 40, a car washer who used to earn about $20 a day cleaning walls of pichação. He said his tormentors would spray their tags on buildings he had just scrubbed. He abhorred the job.

“As a cleaner of their mess,” he said, “I felt horrible.”

The Problem of Graffiti

This guide addresses effective responses to the problem of graffiti the wide range of markings, etchings and paintings that deface public or private property.† In recent decades, graffiti has become an extensive problem, spreading from the largest cities to other locales. Despite the common association of graffiti with gangs, graffiti is widely found in jurisdictions of all sizes, and graffiti offenders are by no means limited to gangs.† Although graffiti is also found within public or private property (such as in schools), this guide primarily addresses graffiti in places open to public view. Because of its rising prevalence in many areas and the high costs typically associated with cleanup and prevention graffiti is often viewed as a persistent, if not an intractable, problem. Few graffiti offenders are apprehended, and some change their methods and locations in response to possible apprehension and cleanups. As with most forms of vandalism, graffiti is not routinely reported to police. Many people think that graffiti is not a police or "real crime" problem, or that the police can do little about it. Because graffiti is not routinely reported to police or other agencies, its true scope is unknown. But graffiti has become a major concern, and the mass media, including movies and websites glamorizing or promoting graffiti as an acceptable form of urban street art, have contributed to its spread. Although graffiti is a common problem, its intensity varies substantially from place to place. While a single incident of graffiti does not seem serious, graffiti has a serious cumulative effect; its initial appearance in a location appears to attract more graffiti. Local graffiti patterns appear to emerge over time, thus graffiti takes distinctive forms, is found in different locations, and may be associated with varying motives of graffiti offenders. These varying attributes offer important clues to the control and prevention of graffiti. For many people, graffiti's presence suggests the government's failure to protect citizens and control lawbreakers. There are huge public costs associated with graffiti: an estimated $12 billion a year is spent cleaning up graffiti in the United States. Graffiti contributes to lost revenue associated with reduced ridership on transit systems, reduced retail sales and declines in property value. In addition, graffiti generates the perception of blight and heightens fear of gang activity.

Related Problems

Graffiti is not an isolated problem. It is often related to other crime and disorder problems, including:

• public disorder, such as littering, public urination and loitering;
• shoplifting of materials needed for graffiti, such as paint and markers;1
• gangs and gang violence, as gang graffiti conveys threats and identifies turf boundaries; and
• property destruction, such as broken windows or slashed bus or train seats.

Factors Contributing to Graffiti

Understanding the factors that contribute to your problem will help you frame your own local analysis questions, determine good effectiveness measures, recognize key intervention points, and select appropriate responses.

Types of Graffiti

There are different types of graffiti. The major types include:

• gang graffiti, often used by gangs to mark turf or convey threats of violence, and sometimes copycat graffiti, which mimics gang graffiti;
• tagger graffiti, ranging from high-volume simple hits to complex street art;
• conventional graffiti, often isolated or spontaneous acts of "youthful exuberance," but sometimes malicious or vindictive; and
• ideological graffiti, such as political or hate graffiti, which conveys political messages or racial, religious or ethnic slurs.

In areas where graffiti is prevalent, gang and tagger graffiti are the most common types found. While other forms of graffiti may be troublesome, they typically are not as widespread. The proportion of graffiti attributable to differing motives varies widely from one jurisdiction to another.† The major types of graffiti are discussed later.

Common Targets and Locations of Graffiti

Graffiti typically is placed on public property, or private property adjacent to public space. It is commonly found in transportation systems on inner and outer sides of trains, subways and buses, and in transit stations and shelters. It is also commonly found on vehicles; walls facing streets; street, freeway and traffic signs; statues and monuments; and bridges. In addition, it appears on vending machines, park benches, utility poles, utility boxes, billboards, trees, streets, sidewalks, parking garages, schools, business and residence walls, garages, fences, and sheds. In short, graffiti appears almost any place open to public view. In some locations, graffiti tends to recur. In fact, areas where graffiti has been painted over especially with contrasting color may be a magnet to be revandalized.† Some offenders are highly tenacious conducting a psychological battle with authorities or owners for their claim over an area or specific location. Such tenacity appears to be related to an escalating defiance of authority. Graffiti locations are often characterized by the absence of anyone with direct responsibility for the area. This includes public areas, schools, vacant buildings, and buildings with absentee landlords. Offenders also target locations with poor lighting and little oversight by police or security personnel.

Some targets and locations appear particularly vulnerable to graffiti:

• easy-to-reach targets, such as signs;
• particularly hard-to-reach locations, such as freeway overpasses;
• highly visible locations, such as building walls;
• locations where a wall or fence is the primary security, and where there are few windows, employees or passersby;
• locations where oversight is cyclical during the day or week, or where people are intimidated by graffiti offenders;
• mobile targets, such as trains or buses, which generate wide exposure for the graffiti; and
• places where gang members congregate — taverns, bowling alleys, convenience store parking lots, and residential developments with many children or youth.

In addition, two types of surfaces attract graffiti:

• Light-colored surfaces. Dark surfaces do not generally attract as much graffiti, but can be marred with lightcolored paint.
• Large and plain surfaces. Surfaces without windows or doors may be appealing for large-scale projects. Smooth surfaces especially attract offenders who use felt-tip markers.

Motives of Offenders

While making graffiti does not offer material reward to offenders, contrary to public opinion, it does have meaning. Rather than being a senseless destruction of property, graffiti fulfills certain psychological needs, including providing excitement and action, a sense of control and an element of risk. The different types of graffiti are associated with different motives, although these drives may overlap.† Distinguishing between types of graffiti and associated motives is a critical step for developing an effective response.