They should be evaluated by two or three local professionals, for they are not considered graffiti unless orally assessed.
“Without a seal and a triangular stamp?!” a Soviet-to-the-backbone bureaucrat will cry out in a fit of hysterics at some office.
“Yes, sir,” the graffiti professional will chuckle proudly and stride majestically to the big flea- market on Uzhhorod’s Krasnodontsiv Street to buy ten-hryvnia-worth paint bottles. Novices also buy chalk to make sketches, but professionals do not use it: they just spray from the bottle on a vertical surface where SOMETHING is gradually taking shape to become a new revelation that must change, if not the whole world, then at least the provincial Uzhhorod life on the threshold of Europe. It is better if the bottle has a tiny hole. For if the jet of paint is too thick, the intended images will also be big, and it is difficult to draw the background.
Not all amateurs know that our feeble housing-maintenance offices can issue permission for an image that will adorn, at least a little, a certain awful structure. So “artists” work at night at their own risk. Word has it they can be nabbed by police. Yet, nobody has heard that one was, although police vigilance has been made a legend of. So policemen love graffiti. Good for them!
Painting gives birth to team spirit. For a graffiti man is not alone when he goes to work a wonder for his home town: he goes with a team called — like in the times of Nestor Makhno — a band. But the meaning of the old word is different. Brighter! Hey boys, take me to your band. I have never been a wet blanket in this quaint city.
I will note that those who paint are mostly rappers and hip-hoppers, while punks and hard-corers are not so enthusiastic, for they have idiosyncrasies of their own. The punk does not consider it necessary to draw graffiti. He is just absorbed in other spheres: he listens to and purposefully learns to understand the meaning of music.
“You should know,” says punk Vitaly Serdiuk, “what they want to say to you and be able to speak out wise things so that others could learn them and thus train their brains. You must also know how to play — and coolly so! — a certain instrument. And sing meaningful lyrics, not just ‘My house has burned down’.”
It is he who recalled the song of a beggar woman next to the Progress food store. Punks and hard-corers play professionally. Their idols are classy groups White Zombie, Korn, Scene Hate, Tek, Slyp Knot Iowa, and System of a Down.
The bands have not divided any spheres of influence or territories. But if somebody obviously takes a dim view of their group, they have to stand up for themselves.
The old city band punks are clever indeed. Their graffiti are cooler than those of the new city band: the latter is looser and less cultured, mostly comprising the rappers and hip-hoppers who lose out on “being advanced.” But this is the opinion of those who envy them. In reality, they are also very swell guys.
The new movements do show a tendency towards culture and development. For example, rappers, who have music of their own, also display the need of figurative art (graffiti). You paint, improve yourself, and turn musician. You compose music of your own without a letup. This is good! What is worse is that, for many, school does not fit in at all with these values. The punks, on the contrary, believe they should be the leaders here, too. They take everything seriously.
“And how can one become a punk?” I ask Petro O.
“You should really prosper every day. Once you’re a rapper, make new songs, paint. Listen to and get into the hang of more groups. Work will make you a punk. I, too, have finally become a full- fledged punk after I’d gone through rap and hard core. I wish to learn and discover more and more new things. I will never stop in this world that increasingly expands before my eyes.”
Like elsewhere, those who adequately master the subject are developing. Like in any phenomenon, there are, of course, some superficial people. Nobody drives them away. Everybody has a chance to develop. These fads came from “over there” through the crumbled “iron curtain.” They are extremely individual. They cherish human friendship. You can be a true friend of theirs even if you are not a rapper or a punk.
