Editor’s note: I am so glad to publish this essay by the prolific ekg. This piece of writing explores some of ekg’s ideas about street art and graffiti while chronicling his time getting up in Paris earlier this year. ekg’s work may at first appear to be quite simple, but upon closer inspection it’s clear that there’s a lot going on behind his tag. Hopefully this essay provides a bit of insight the mind of ekg. – RJ Rushmore
L’Imagination Prend Le Pouvoir! (Imagination Usurps Power!), or what i was thinking while getting up in Paris for three weeks.
by ekg
the above Situationist slogan was one of many revolutionary statements painted across the walls of Paris during the 1968 youth rebellion. the idea that imagination is revolutionary was a revelation to me. the inner personal vision becomes political; the political becomes fantastical. this internal reversal stokes passion and inspires external action, resulting in even more commitment to the illegal public mark, the residue and resonance of such revolutionary aesthetic actions. beautifully symmetrical in equivalency and explosive force, external actions that initiate change become a reflection of the internal universal. at this point in the grand evolution of our species, having created an electronic topological reality of coordinates, data, and patterns, Graffiti and Street Art are the uncontrolled voice, the instinctual blurt, the collective convulsive id of the cultural unconscious, a channel for aggressive alternative frequencies, the visually vociferous, ghost images of mutated mass-media, writhing wraiths of the imagination, irruptions into the matrix. in terms of these ideals, Paris is still a city vibrating with aesthetic rebellion and living up to its past as a hot bed of experimentation, philosophy and art, especially, graffiti and street art.
while in Paris, i was on an all-city broadcast mission: solo guerrilla visual communication and direct neurological connection with the local populace, utilizing the physicality of the materials, tools, methods, and operations of Graffiti and Street Art to transmit illegal aesthetic manifestations. i had also visited a bunch of other cities over this past year, where i would simply walk and tag for eight-to-twelve hours a day until i would leave the city one-to-three weeks later. walking so much, just looking for the next spot, is mesmerizing, as distinguished from meditative, relaxed or unconscious, other descriptions i have read describing the experience of tagging. personally, i become energized and elevated, turned on and tuned in, an activated semiotic transmission tower, relay station, radar, satellite: during the day, one develops a heightened awareness of the empty spaces, the bubbles of silence, between the flow of people and traffic, finding that subtle spot of invisibility within the rhythm designated by the metronome of the traffic and pedestrian light system; whereas at night it is the opposite, turning up the antennae to eleven, hyper-aware of a single particular movement or noise, the glare of headlights, the rhythmic approach of pedestrian shoes, just one noise or movement. Lab Note: a look-out check list for any time of day: 1. pedestrians 2. cars (parked and moving) 3. police 4. surveillance cameras 5. windows (including second floors). as Rusk once said to me: Stay paranoid, stay safe.
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