I’ve often found that N.C. State isn’t an ugly campus, despite claims that some magazines labeled it in the top ten of ugly colleges. I like the bricks over everything and the buildings that don’t match each other at all. It’s got a charm. One of my favorite places on campus was the Free Expression tunnel, but careful readers will notice the past tense.
See, the Free Expression tunnel used to be about graffiti. Anyone could grab an aerosol can and make their own, however temporary, mark on campus. There’s an interesting statement to be made about how graffiti, originally a territorial marking, has become a transitory art form that anyone can modify or cover up, but that’s not the point I’d like to address.
Instead, I’ve noticed a growing trend of people advertising on the tunnel. I don’t mean “Drink Coca Cola,” although there’s a small amount of that going on as well. The first time I went to the tunnel to practice graffiti, a group of students painted the entire tunnel (as in with paint rollers) in red and wrote the names of students in whatever degree program they were in. That’s an extreme example, but it’s not an uncommon sight to go through the tunnel and see some fraternity or sorority writing their insignia over a pretty good chunk of the tunnel, or someone advertising some other organization.
Did I miss a memo or something? Did everyone get together and decide that the best use for one of the only outlets for legal graffiti in Raleigh was to paint over it with bulletin board advertisements? Aren’t there hundreds of other ways to get your name out there? There are bulletin boards and kiosks all over campus to hang signs on, ads in the Technician (and sometimes an entire article if the event is large enough), The Wolf Web, and let’s not forget all that wonderful brick just dying to be chalked upon. It’s just kind of beyond me. If someone gave me a can of paint and a canvas and told me to paint, I wouldn’t draw the NCSU logo or “Come to the Sock Hop.” I’d probably try and express myself in some other way.
But maybe your frat or even the Sock Hop are all part of your intrinsic personality. I know a friend who loves parkour, so he painted the glyph for the sport on the wall. But at least he incorporated it in an interesting way, using lots of colors and writing a few lines under it (“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, Too bad he didn’t know Parkour!”), not just the standard logo.
You know, I’d like it if people used the tunnel for tags and artwork more than just advertising their frats or their colleges. What I don’t understand though is why people even bother.
Well, I don’t quite understand expressing your love for whatever you’re a part of, since I like to define myself not by what I belong to but what I think instead. But I understand that sometimes you meet an organization or a frat that meets those intrinsic qualities, and you want to share it. But if you’re going to tag up over someone else’s hard work, at least make it interesting. We all know that frats use Greek letters and that colleges have certain people in them or even that the Sock Hop is on Tuesday; the point of art is to make us care, not to recreate logos and slogans.
Graffiti was originally about defying organization and convention. So why are we doing the same corporate hogwash we see on TV?
