When the dust had settled after this year’s carnival, all that remained was a fuck load of graffiti. They had basically tagged the shit out of the entire area. Almost no wall in the immediate vicinity seemed to have escaped. They scrawled and sprayed all over shops, properties, walls, phone boxes, even trees! You name it, they tagged it. Its basically like being invited over to someone’s house for a party then taking a dump on their carpet. My issue is not with tagging itself, although, unlike a lot of graffiti and street art, it has no aesthetic merit to speak of and is the human equivalent of dogs pissing up against walls. (will quit with the bodily function analogies) It’s just another form of territory marking. The only difference is you permanently deface things in the process. Actually by the sounds of it, it would appear I do have a problem with tagging..
However my main problem with tagging at the Carnival is that the local council will have to spend a ton of money cleaning it up and then they will use it as an excuse to say that its too costly and there is too much property damage and that will give them a reason to stop it. And we do not want to give them any excuse to do that so the main aim is to avoid that at all costs. So if you are coming to Carnival next year, just come and enjoy yourself and don’t fuck the place up in the process. Use the boards that are erected everywhere to leave your tag if you need to, just leave people’s homes and businesses out of it.
There is this notion that the area is just full of posh rich folk which is only true of a percentage of the residents. There is a whole community that live in W.11 that do not fit into that category at all and the real Notting Hill story is fuck all like the one with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in it. And yes, tourists still come to the blue door, 2o friggin years later, to get their picture taken in front of it. But that is not a true and accurate representation of the neighbourhood.
The tagging does feel like a bit of a ‘fuck you’ to the wealthy residents and an angry protest at the massive inequality present within this city which is valid but it is a misguided one for a lot of the places that get mangled in the process. And you have been invited to this area to have a party and a good time, so its a little disrespectful to than mash the place up.
I spent two days directly after carnival photographing every bit of graffiti that had been done over the weekend and ended up with nearly 300 shots all of which I have featured into this short 1 minute movie which will be on my Instagram page later on today (@babycakesromero) and here it is if you are not part of the digital picture party that never ends…
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmkQKIbjLfs&frags=pl%2Cwn