Final summer time, in Mexico Metropolis, the very first tag I noticed coming into the town was 10FOOT. The summer time prior, enroute to NYC, 10FOOT. My every day on the way in which to work espresso in London, additionally 10FOOT. This stage of worldwide but comfortingly acquainted fame is seldom realised in observe.
Cultural criminologist Erik Hannerz argues that fame in graffiti is commonly seen as a aggressive particular person endeavour, with uber-prolific kings, like 10Foot, TOX and Fume valorised (or demonised and imprisoned) for his or her extremely seen ad-infinitum claims over the town’s surfaces. Nonetheless, Erik factors out that this individualistic model of fame misses the precise level of graffiti:
The issue is that fame is assumed to be a extremely particular person effort, slightly than a collective one… This stress on instrumentality and the aggressive component takes away the fervour and the enjoyable. To make certain [writers] notice that graffiti includes a contest for house, for visibility. However it’s a sport you play to play, to not win. What issues extra… is friendship, creativity, enjoyable, thrill, and the collective.
10FOOT, TOX and FUME’s Lengthy Darkish Tunnel goes a way in the direction of animating this seldom represented subcultural and pro-social playful facet of graffiti. This can be a collective and multi-generational present, which additionally references the long-standing DDS crew. The exhibition features a tribute to Robbo (1969-2014) behind caged TFL mesh, that includes quietly quotidian objects – soccer scarves, spray cans, headphones, blurry pictures, his worn overcoat – which demonstrates a depth of element, care and respect not typically evident in additional business graffiti exhibitions.
Earlier than the opening of The Lengthy Darkish Tunnel, the venue was a intently guarded secret. There was widespread hypothesis concerning the location, with individuals questioning if this may be in an deserted warehouse or a disused hidden underground station. It seems to be housed at Arts ARKADE, only a few steps from Piccadilly Circus station.
However unusually for central London, this isn’t an upmarket white dice. Each obtainable floor has been painted, tagged, etched, or interfered with ultimately. From the doorway, hand sprayed tiles seamlessly proceed the colourway of Piccadilly Circus station tiles to the higher stage, the place these are changed with a whole bunch of brown hand sprayed tunnel bricks of maddeningly irregular sizes.
Ascending the escalator to the gallery, a jagged diagonal side-line of framed posters are positioned at familiarly common intervals. These battered frames are amongst lots of the purloined treasures (CCTV, cabling, lighting, fencing and far more) borrowed from the TFL and embedded within the house, making it really feel like an illegitimate but affectionate extension of the community. The primary gallery house incorporates a wall size life-sized duplicate of a totally graffitied underground prepare. And the title of the exhibition references the tunnels of London’s underground and the jungle observe “Valley of the Shadows” by Origin Unknown.
Regardless of its location in touristic Piccadilly Circus, The Lengthy Darkish Tunnel one way or the other achieves a stage of authenticity in its ‘artification’ of graffiti’s subcultural practices – to a level seldom realised in gallery or museum house. For the reason that Nineteen Eighties, the white dice has been accused of killing graffiti – in rendering a type of ‘wild’ and anarchic subcultural expression into one thing ‘useless and inauthentic’ when reproduced on canvas in sterile gallery house. Curatorial methods to beat this entropy typically embrace course of movies or site-specific pictures, and typically additionally graffiti-related artifacts encased in glass show models – spray cans, gloves, blackbooks and so forth. However these have – to date – been for probably the most half top-down curatorial methods.
The influence of The Lengthy Darkish Tunnel lies not simply in intelligent curatorial methods, however within the multilayers of multimodal references woven all through the house. Recognising a minimum of a number of the references on this present means you might be a part of the sport. Many viewers, particularly these visiting on the joyous chaos of opening night time, or the clueless vacationers wandering in from Piccadilly Circus, will doubtless recognize the present, however might nicely miss this stage of rabbit gap element.
However isn’t this simply how graffiti works? Via indicators that everybody can see, however not everybody can learn?
In a unprecedented consideration to element, even the merch costs are coded. The fundamental however elegant black exhibition poster is priced at an reasonably priced £16.49. A reference to England’s distinctive graffiti historical past? In 1649, the Levellers, a political motion devoted to equality earlier than the legislation, noticed lots of its members imprisoned and executed. Of their wake, they left indelible information by carved title graffiti that persists to today. The silver model of the present poster is priced at £28.20. That is doubtless a reference to the burden of silver, by way of worth per ounce.
Within the gallery, 10Foot’s A406 guide is priced at £10.10 (however the normal launch now obtainable on-line is priced at £13.12, which in fact interprets to ACAB). Flipping open the A406 zine prompts a way of déjà vu, because the printed textual content clearly echoes the audio observe from 10Foot’s part of the present. Pared right down to the textual content alone, the cadence of 10Foot’s phrases on the web page provides a extra reflective and fewer frenetic entry level to this work. In gallery-space, that is voiced by a complicated robotic prepare announcer, intermixed with music and layers of site-sampled sounds together with the crunch of gravel underfoot on the tracks, muted prepare doorways opening and shutting, and the whoosh of visitors. This phenomenological stage of consideration to element was on opening night time sadly utterly inaudible.
10Foot’s bodily items within the present playfully subvert the type of British racing inexperienced motorway indicators, changing locations with mundane micro-decision factors – beans and cheese for tea? Or simply beans? These are multimodal experiential works designed to be considered within the context of this immersive audio-scape. The total audio file is on the market on-line at https://ctlly.cc.
TOX’s Regina vs. TOX 01 To TOX 25 zine is priced at £20.25. A self-evident, however nonetheless satisfying title/date reference. This slim and unassuming monochromatic booklet incorporates an anonymised barrage of a multifold of authorized information testifying to each single cost TOX has encountered in getting up, plus a rigorously hid full color concertina centrefold.
In TOX’s personal phrases, these fees vary from “9 jail sentences… for high-value prison injury, all the way in which to a month in HMP Wandsworth for failing to own a £3 prepare ticket from Vauxhall to Clapham Junction.” TOX’s unrelenting rules are mirrored in his contained color palette, which attracts strictly on the colors representing London’s underground traces. His works for the present additionally reference the as soon as plush but now typically threadbare interiors of the trains, with summary items that rework the moquette threads of the trains’ worn seats, with a stage of drip that captures the sluggish decay, but relentless power, of the community.
At first look, Fume’s works maybe most intently resemble older and extra conventional ‘outsider’ graffiti canvases. Nonetheless, on nearer inspection, these intricate items additionally engender a radically multimodal transfer. Fume incorporates precise supplies from London’s underground within the type of subway tunnel mud. Anybody who has braved the London underground – not to mention traversed its community of lengthy darkish tunnels by foot – is intimately conversant in the traditional metallic blood odor of this mud.
That is how London truly smells, when you scratch the floor. Fume’s works additionally present a remarkably detailed and mischievous re-enactment of a legendary second in London’s graffiti historical past. His Operation Massive O tetraptych animates DDS’s notorious Covid 2020 Christmas takeover of Oxford Circus tube station – as a result of Christmas supplies a golden second of alternative for civil intervention, because the trains cease operating.
Past The Lengthy Darkish Tunnel’s many layered subcultural references, and the artists’ thought of and centered work, this present additionally takes care to convey subcultural ethics in observe. Not least within the palpable resistance to commodification which retains the artists’ integrity as a collective, regardless of internet hosting an exhibition in central London. Throughout the launch week, 10Foot took over The Massive Subject ({a magazine} which helps the unhoused), with tightly curated content material together with an unprecedented interview by Banksy with TOX, the first-ever revealed pictures from Bas DDS, and an iconic interview with Fume – the primary since Bomb Alert 2003.
That is now formally the best-selling Massive Subject ever. No business commercials had been included and proceeds from the gross sales from the present will fund the sans-corporate-advertising manufacturing prices. If nothing else, this finally displays, in observe, the ethics of The Lengthy Darkish Tunnel.
Simply don’t flip it.
Textual content by Dr Susan Hansen for Juxtapoz. Learn our characteristic on 10FOOT, TOX and FUME from our Winter challenge right here.
