Tezuka− My name is Miwako Tezuka. I am an independent curator. I am also a co-founder of an online group called PoNJA-GenKon, which is a forum of art professionals, artists, and scholars who are interested in post-1945 Japanese art. Today I am talking to Enrico to learn from his knowledge of graffiti and street art both as a practitioner and a person who has circulated in periphery of the field to have more objective view into this activity.
First, I thought it might be interesting to formulate my questions coming out from you, because we will love to know about you and how you relate to this particular field.

 

Encounter with graffiti culture

Ōyama ── I first encountered graffiti culture in Tokyo as a high school student in around 2000. Back then, there was a trend of street culture from New York. But when I became a college student, somehow, I started doing live painting performance in clubs rather than graffiti on the streets. It was a bit different.
Live painting was something new at the time and the community was tiny. Actually it wasn't really a community, but just a loose network of a handful of individual artists who didn't really fit into other existing subculture groups. In 2007, I enrolled in MFA at Tokyo University of the Arts and I had to explain to art people what was my cultural background because they only knew artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat or Keith Haring from the 80’s.

 

Tezuka ── The way you encountered graffiti culture, was it particularly Tokyo-centered?

 

Ōyama ── Although graffiti is a global culture, I personally experienced it in Tokyo, and it had its own style and vibe.

 

Tezuka ── It’s probably because, ever since in the 80’s, Tokyo has been much more globalized and become a multi-cultural center in Japan. Maybe you want to show some examples of artists in the 80’s, like Haring, Basquiat, and those who are foundational artists of the New York graffiti culture?

 

Ōyama ── Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat emerged in the 80’s much after graffiti culture already established itself as one of the important subcultures in New York. This is a work of Keith Haring.

 

Tezuka ── I think this kind of signature style of Haring was already present in the 80’s and the early 90’s even in Japan?

 

Ōyama ── Yes, Haring did a solo show in Galerie Watari in Tokyo in 1983. Sogetsu Art Center also did a group show "ART IN ACTION" in 1985 featuring Kenny Scharf, another graffiti-influenced artist of the time.

 

Tezuka ── It’s not that early from the perspective of New York, or the American art scene. But in Japan, it was pretty early for Sogetsu Art Center to have done the group exhibition like that.

 

Ōyama ── Right. The daughter of the founder of Sogetsu Art Center…

 

Tezuka ── Kiri Teshigahara.

 

Ōyama ── She was in New York in 80’s. She knew those artists and brought them to Tokyo.

 

Tezuka ── It is interesting that there is always a particular individual who becomes a bridge between different cultures. In a way, Enrico, where you are coming from is the bridge between these scenes that are happening in New York and Tokyo. When you were preparing to write the book, how did you do the research? How did you create the narrative of this development?

 

Ōyama ── For basic research, I read other books, mostly in English, that discussed graffiti culture. Most of them were written in a sociological framework. I thought my role was not to reproduce what academic Western sociologists have already done, but to take my own perspective as an artist from Tokyo.
In the first chapter, I discussed eight individual street artists. In the second chapter, I summarized the history of New York graffiti culture contextualizing it in a narrative that originates from other graffiti phenomena in the early 20th century in the United States. In the third chapter, I discussed Japanese contemporary subculture and social situation, such as Otaku culture and 3.11 disaster, in relation to graffiti culture. In the last chapter, I linked graffiti culture with the art criticism in the 60’s New York.
I also personally know some graffiti writers here in New York. I went to meet them and learned more about history by directly talking with them.

 

Tezuka ── I think those particular individual, intimate encounters and relationships that you created with the active artists here are very interesting. Is there any artist in particular whom you would like to show image here, and discuss?

 

Ōyama ── These are two photos of the "hits" from the early 70’s in New York. The left one is by COCO144, and the right one is by PHASE2. They are both pioneers of early graffiti culture in New York.

 

From empty signs to stylized names

Tezuka ── In the book, Enrico talks about this stylistic originality and uniqueness and how artists individually come up with it. So, maybe it is your test to describe the style in language.

 

Ōyama ── When graffiti culture first developed in the early 70’s, not many styles were established. Jean Baudrillard called graffiti "empty sign". He meant that graffiti had no meanings or messages to their readers because it is an act of name writing and names are about shapes and sounds without meanings. Before name-writing graffiti, there were political propaganda graffiti, which aimed to tell messages to the public. Baudrillard was aware of this contrast, and so he called graffiti "empty sign". Throughout the 70’s, however, the graffiti writers developed unique stylistic visual language of names and letters. It became larger, funkier and more decorative.

 

Tezuka ── The essence of tagging is really marking that you are there.

 

Ōyama ── Yes. It became the way to express their alter ego through stylized name writings, and then, that was not "empty sign" anymore because it was filled with the writer’s alter ego. This shift from message-based political graffiti to "empty sign" to name-based stylized graffiti is very important to understand the culture. (Pointing the images in the screen.) Those "hits" by COCO144 and PHASE2 were created in the transitional period. They were still "empty sign", but you can recognize certain style as well.
People think of graffiti as a part of hip-hop culture, but that happened in the 80’s. Instead, the foundation was made in the 70’s. It is often overlooked.

 

Tezuka ── It is the first transition from "writing", majority of times, with political messages. The late 60’s and early 70’s were when a number of student protests against the Vietnam War were happening all over the world, so that was reflected in the development of "writing". So, when it became graffiti, it lost that kind of more detailed political messages. It became the signature, the name, the name itself that is the sign. So I guess Baudrillard is criticizing the emptiness of that marking.

 

Ōyama ── Baudrillard said graffiti was very strong because it was empty and that’s how it resisted against authorities. At the same time, one of his backgrounds is Marxism. While discussing graffiti, he obviously thinks of the historical context of other social activities by working class people in the past, which were filled with the ideology. When he calls graffiti "empty sign", it sounds a bit ironical because it implies that those contexts in the past seems to be forgotten by graffiti writers.

 

Tezuka ── Was it particularly American phenomenon? Or was it happening in Europe? I think you mentioned that you encountered graffiti in Italy too, no?

 

Ōyama ── I lived in Italy when I was 16 to 17 years old and saw graffiti there as well. I knew about the culture already before but Italian graffiti were a bit different from those in Tokyo, style-wise.

 

Tezuka ── Do you know anything about the late 60’s and early 70’s graffiti presence in Japan?

 

Ōyama ── I do not know much. There was this student’s action also in Japan, called Zenkyoto [Zengaku Kyoto Kaigi (All-Campus Joint Struggle League)]. I assume there were some political graffiti there, but not really name-writing graffiti like those in New York.

 

Tezuka ── When you are doing this kind of digging up the history behind the development of graffiti culture, were you consciously thinking about where you are in relation to the context? Was it self-analysis?

 

Ōyama ── It is difficult to analyze myself, but yes, I am conscious to contextualize my practice within this lineage. I discussed about it in the last part of the book, and that is almost my artist statement. Some of historical contexts discussed in the book stream into that statement. As an artist, it makes more sense for me to relate the discussion to my own practice.

 

Tezuka ── After finish writing this whole text, what does text mean to you? Is this more… the way you map out your own identity as an artist?

 

Ōyama ── Yes, I think one of the things I did in the book is to position myself. That is usually what a critic, or a historian does instead of an artist himself. I fortunately had an opportunity to do so on my own right.

 

Tezuka ── Might be a sort of direct effect of the lack of critical knowledge within Japanese art critics about graffiti art and its contexts at the time when you started your artistic activities. I was really interested in how far back in the history you looked at in the book. You start with talking about the mid-to-late 19th century cases of individuals writing. You see the connection of these examples to graffiti art, but is that your own view? Or is it generally how the origin of graffiti is discussed here or elsewhere?

 

Ōyama ── The historical reference to earlier graffiti phenomena from the late 19th century to the early 20th century has been partially discussed by other researchers or practitioners of New York subway graffiti. I would say the way I put those historical examples together in order to form a broader cultural narrative was something unique to my work. Also, many books apply already-existing frameworks of academic field, such as sociology, criminology or cultural studies, to graffiti analysis. I wanted to avoid that and establish the historical context of graffiti on its own right. That is why I referred many other graffiti phenomena.

 

Common points and differences between graffiti and live painting

Tezuka ── Do you want to go back to those two artists' examples?

 

Ōyama ── On the right is PHASE2, and on the left is ALE ONE, whose work is on the cover of the book. Let me show COCO144 too.

 

Tezuka ── These are the artists you actually befriended with.

 

Ōyama ── I am friend of COCO144 and ALE ONE. I've never seen PHASE2 yet but I hope to meet him in the future. He is very important. All of them shown here are very important pioneers of graffiti culture. PHASE2 and COCO144 have also exhibited their graffiti works in gallery context in the early 70’s. They formed this collective called United Graffiti Artists in 1972, and did gallery and museum shows throughout the early 70’s until around 1976.

 

Tezuka ── How did you meet them?

 

Ōyama ── I met COCO144 through a friend. When I first met him, I didn't know about him because, again, the early 70’s graffiti is not that much known even in New York. But after having a conversation with him, I realized he is very important. About ALE ONE, I learned about him after coming to New York. I contacted him online to ask for the picture to use on the book cover.

 

Tezuka ── Now that you met these artists who are active here since the 70’s, did you find out how they see their activities in relation to the longer, a kind of art historical, context?

 

Ōyama ── When they started their activity in the early 70’s, I think most of them never imagined that the culture would become such a big global thing. It has still been developing and also getting mixed with contemporary art. But again, most of the pioneers do not get much attention yet from the art world, probably overlooked. I personally think we should learn more about this foundation period.

 

Tezuka ── Why do you think this kind of early history didn't get translated or introduced to Japan until you wrote this book?

 

Ōyama ── Maybe not only in Japan, but in other countries as well. One thing is, what happened in the 80’s was that films and photo books on graffiti culture were published and circulated internationally to deliver the culture to other countries. Many young people first encountered graffiti culture in this period.

 

Tezuka ── You also talked about this anonymity in the beginning, and then it turns into the fame. But, this anonymity issue, you bring in an example of some films capturing some writers actually doing the graffiti on site. How do you see the relationship between visible performance, performativity of graffiti, and this anonymity from which graffiti originally came.

 

Ōyama ── The visual language of graffiti developed because the writer himself is absent. In graffiti culture, the act of name writing is something similar to creating your portrait. A name is like a face, and the physical body is not there so the name needs to represent writer’s existence. That’s why the styles have been developing so much. A graffiti writer seeks to be famous by a name with himself staying anonymous.
In contrast, live painting has different situation because artist’s presence is right there and he has to perform in front of the audience. It is a reversed situation. But, there is this tension when doing live painting because there is a similar sense of risk-taking. Artist can never make a mistake because every single action is witnessed by the audience. In a way, that is a similar experience to do graffiti in the dark. Writers have to be very quick, and avoid making mistakes such as making a noise because police might find them.

 

Tezuka ── I think the difference between the two is this criminality, like whether it’s vandalism or an artistic action. These early pioneers, how did they first start? As vandalists / criminals?

 

Ōyama ── Very important. Although it’s true that graffiti was always illegal and they still did it knowing so, I think, when it started in the early 70’s, they were not that conscious of being "criminal" as much as the public believed so, because they were just kids. It makes more sense to think that they just naturally expressed themselves by writing their names in public space. That was an illegal act, but it’s hard to think that being illegal itself was their purpose.
　Indeed they never called what they did "graffiti" but "writing", which sounds less criminal. But, as the conflict between the graffiti community and New York City got heavier, the writers themselves gained more sense that what they were doing was a crime and also internalized that feeling. In the end, some writers started defining the primal element of graffiti as being illegal and the fight against authorities.

 

Tezuka ── So who came up with the term "graffiti"?

 

Ōyama ── In the early 70’s, New York City government and some newspapers have already called it graffiti. As the culture developed, a dichotomy that questions if graffiti was a social problem or a new art form was formed as framework to discuss the culture. I think the first person who used the term "war on graffiti" was maybe New York City mayor of that time, John Lindsay.

 

The border between street art and fine art

Tezuka ── Can you show us some examples of the following generation of graffiti artists and their works?

 

Ōyama ── This is Barry McGee who is originally from San Francisco, and now famous globally. He is half Chinese and half Irish and is best known for impressive face drawing. He and Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara are friends, so I also discussed a bit about similarity of their styles in my book.

 

Tezuka ── Mr. Nara would hate me to say this, but he was arrested several years ago for doing graffiti at Union Square station. So he is kind of going back to where all graffiti started, but he does befriend closely with McGee. I think the way Nara sees McGee is this kind of childlikeness, not so much innocence, but like savagery of childhood. They are not afraid of anything. There is a kind of similarity between the childlike innocence and the energy of the graffiti artists.
But maybe McGee is much more conscious about being an artist rather than a street artist, yes?

 

Ōyama ── Yes, and that is why I think he is more like a next generation artist. He studied in art school while he also did graffiti in the streets. Some artists of his generation were like that. For them, there is no hierarchy between the two and they just absorbed inspiration from two different contexts very naturally and mixed them in their own way. That didn't happen to most of pioneers in the early 70s.

 

Tezuka ── Now, looking at artists like McGee, do you feel affinity with him because you have a similar interests that overlap? He was interested in fine art as an artist, and you are too…and you also wrote this book to show the background from which you discovered your own visual language. How do you feel about your relationship with McGee?

 

Ōyama ── In comparison to the early 70’s graffiti pioneers, probably McGee and I both stand on the same side. But that’s a big and rough picture. In reality, I feel we are very different. He is much older than me, and he did both graffiti in the streets and gallery shows. He is an insider of both worlds.
I was always on the border. I never really belonged to the graffiti community and have always been half observer. To a certain extent, this was because of Tokyo environment, where it was very difficult to practice graffiti in the streets. It made me choose to be active as a live painting artist in club scenes rather than a graffiti writer in the streets. But I was also very influenced by graffiti culture in terms of the visual language…so my relation to the culture has always been vague. That vagueness became my motivation to analyze the culture, and write texts from my own standing point to contextualize my practice. I think McGee never had such an idea.

 

Tezuka ── This discussion of you coming from Tokyo environment is intriguing because a part of your book is also about the urban space and how graffiti writers interact with it or interject into it. How did you observe Tokyo as that kind of space? Was there any kind of space where graffiti writers could do the act of objection to "everything-clean" environment of Tokyo?

 

Ōyama ── Yes, but I think it wasn't really a political resistance to too much clean environment. I think there was this common feeling that graffiti was something cool, and it was more about style…and once someone got into the culture, it is something very strong that bonds him to the community. It is dense…and it also gives insiders a feel of power.
　Usually, public spaces are under control of authorities and the public. Most of them don't recognize that graffiti is there. But an insider can notice and read it, like this tag is by that writer and that is by another writer…and by having a psychological map of a network of graffiti spread in the streets, he would have a different perspective over the existing urban landscape. It somehow feels like he has a sort of power maybe because he knows something that the others don't know and he is taking a part of something happening under the surface.

 

Getting rid of institutionalized literacy

Tezuka ── Would you like to show some of your work, and maybe you can discuss whether you yourself feel particular characteristics of your work be more affected by Tokyo environment than spaces elsewhere.

 

Ōyama ── This is a mural that I did in 2013 at Clocktower Gallery in New York. I call my style Quick Turn Structure, which is a mostly black-and-white pattern of very angular lines as you can see in this mural. It is not based on letters but completely abstract. In graffiti culture, the act of writing a name and the fact that it’s done in the streets are strongly linked. I didn't really get into the street activity, so I didn't need to write my name. I was more interested in the impact of visual structure of graffiti and how to evolve it in my own way, as well as how to circulate it across the different media instead of being limited in the streets.
I removed letterforms and extracted only the free-flowing lines from its visual structure, which I call Quick Turn, and then repeated them to recompose into another abstract visual image. That is Quick Turn Structure. Regular graffiti represents the writer’s alter ego, but QTS is not my portrait because it’s not my name. Instead, it has its own name and its own life. My role is to visualize its life on canvases or walls…that’s how I feel.
In terms of the environmental influence, "Tokyoness" fits to my reality rather than "Japan-ness". It is hard to explain what it is, but I feel Tokyoness is somehow embedded into my style. Probably it is a sort of tendency to minimalism and simplicity in shape of QTS.

 

Tezuka ── And the way you create this flow is closely related to your body or bone structure.

 

Ōyama ── Yes. It is produced out of my bodily movement. I feel like I'm a mediator.

 

Tezuka ── Also, you talked about the literacy of being able to read or not being able to read, so your work gets rid of all the necessity of being literate in this field.

 

Ōyama ── Exactly. One of the things I discussed in the book is that contemporary art often requires viewers the literacy to understand the context of art history. If you don't have it, sometimes you don't know how to look at certain pieces of art.
A Similar thing can be said to graffiti culture. Again, if someone is an outsider, he doesn't really notice that graffiti is right there in the streets, or even if you notice, you don't know how to read it or understand why it’s there…the term literacy originally means the ability to write and read letters, but now we also use it as the way to describe the ability to understand highly contextualized contents. So, in graffiti culture, the meaning of the term is doubled in both ways because it has low-readability of stylized letters and particular context as subculture.
This means there is a big gap of literacy between the insider and the outsider. The title of my book Against Literacy is meant to argue the importance of getting out of those institutionalized, context-based, literacy-driven ways of looking at art, and of gaining a different type of literacy that I call "sensorial literacy", which is more experience-based rather than context or knowledge-based. Maybe context-based literacy is more familiar with critics and historians whereas sensorial literacy is more familiar with artists.
Because Quick Turn Structure is not composed of letters, the viewer doesn't really need to have literacy to read it or understand the context of graffiti. I mean, you can also read my book and learn about it more in depth, but at the same time you can just see it and feel it aesthetically. I wanted to leave it open.

 

Tezuka ── I am going to pose one last question and it’s to do with the title of the book Against Literacy. We talked about the literacy and how two different meanings correlated. One is the context-based literacy, and the other one is the experience-based "sensorial literacy". I am curious as to why you chose this word "against" rather than say…for instance, "beyond" or something to that effect.

 

Ōyama ── For the title of the book, I referred the book by Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, which I discussed in the last chapter of my book. I did a comparison between Sontag and Michael Fried there…long story short, Fried’s essay "Art and Objecthood" represents the tendency of art criticism to be driven by the context-based literacy while Sontag’s Against Interpretation emphasized the importance of aesthetical and experienced-based way of looking at art using the term "style" as a keyword.

 

Tezuka ── In a way, making the point of understanding graffiti art more democratic to people who might not come from the knowledge of the field like myself. Enrico, thank you very much for this conversation. I learned a lot from your book, and I hope a lot of people read it and learn this exciting field of graffiti and street art.

 

（This talk event was held as book release event of Against Literacy: On Graffiti Culture on 27th June 2015 at Kinokuniya New York.）