/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-CHILE: The Graffiti of Globalisation

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Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Nov 19 2002 (IPS) - In Chile, graffiti – ?the art of making the walls talk? – is no longer focused solely on political rebellion but has transformed into an expression of the segmentation of a society governed by the rules of the market and the presence of emerging cultures in a ?globalising? world.

This according to a study by four communications researchers at the University of Chile who spent a year photographing and categorising thousands of graffiti found on the walls of Santiago.

?Graffiti, like hip-hop culture, indicate fragmentations and convergences within this global society, which no longer moves within the exclusive and totalising categories that it did in the past,? said Rafael del Villar, chairman of the Chilean Semiotics Society and academic adviser of the study, published last month.

Hip-hop and graffiti artists mark emerging identities within the youth sectors of a globalised world, and thus express messages and codes that can either take on a universal validity, or reflect a micro-segmentation within a given community, he said.

In other words, according to researchers Caterina Gaggero, Carolina Jiménez, María Gisela López and Paola Poblete, these informal and often clandestine forms of protest express tensions and unity between ?the local? and ?the global?, a typical trait of the globalisation process itself.

Hip-hop is a dance-music genre that emerged among young, urban African-Americans in the United States in the late 1970s, combining elements of soul music and use of the record player as a musical instrument, in ?scratching? and borrowing musical phrases from various songs.

Graffiti, meanwhile, is a form of expression and communication that dates back even further, with characteristics similar to the old posters, or bills Both appear in public spaces, are usually of anonymous origins, refer to timely themes, and are usually temporary.

But the study notes that while posters are printed – an industrial process – each graffiti is a unique creation, and can trigger a reaction from a group or community, as well as from an individual.

Street painting with political content was a phase of graffiti that attained fame as a cultural and intellectualised expression, particularly beginning in May 1968 with the massive student protests in Paris, with such classics as ?let’s be realistic, let’s demand the impossible?.

In Chile, during the long, iron-fisted dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), graffiti continued to be a political weapon, a form of resistance against the government’s repression.

In that era, say the authors of the study, the messages on public walls served as a source of information for the sectors operating in hiding, eluding the Pinochet government’s authoritarian censors – at least until the graffiti were painted over.

The political protest that marked the anti-dictatorship graffiti have given way to a new sort of expression since Chile’s return to democracy in March 1990.

The four experts established 31 protocols for classifying the graffiti found today in Santiago. Although politics, human rights and social protest maintain a significant presence, they are no longer the exclusive inspiration for ?making the walls talk?.

The most frequent types are ?non-institutional politics?, with 16.6 percent, ?proof of one’s existence? (12.4 percent), ?rappers? (10.7 percent), football (8.5 percent), ?music, groups and styles? (6.1 percent), ?social reflection? (5.5 percent) and ?political moment? (5.0 percent).

Among the categories with lesser frequency are themes related to love, gangs or drugs, in addition to ?pictorial murals?, in which illustrations and slogans are often combined to cover more than one subject.

Because of its unique form of production – informal, without censure, and illegal – graffiti can serve a range of functions, whether at the individual level, such as in identity, or culture-wide, as in the post-modern terminology of ?tribes?, or encompassing the aspirations of an entire community.

?Don’t throw trash, poor but; clean?, says a graffiti – with no worries about correct punctuation – in a poor neighbourhood of Santiago’s outskirts

One young resident of the wealthy district Las Condes, Alejandro, spends his nights on the streets armed with a can of spraypaint to transcribe poems by Alejandro Jodorowsky, a Chilean writer, poet and filmmaker who lives in Paris.

?I see it, and it’s as if it were calling me,? the clandestine poetry-activist says of finding a bare wall.

Retired colonel Cristián Labbé, former vice-minister and repressive agent of the Pinochet dictatorship, currently mayor of the wealthy Santiago district Providencia, has issued security instructions encouraging residents to call the city to report the appearance of new graffiti.

The graffiti artists defy discrimination and persecution in the high-income neighbourhoods, but they give themselves free rein on the large public walls running alongside highways, bridges or railroads throughout the city.

Some of the humorous graffiti the four researchers found were: ?The car will never replace the stallion. Signed, the mare?. ?I am not a complete idiot. but I’m a good example of one.? ?Bilardo told me to play close to the white line (Diego Maradona).? ?First one there is an embryo, said the sperm?