Writing …The Name of God.
Towards a negative theology of the tag

Essential Communication

To believe in God means to believe in the world, to believe that all exists. Existence is reality, that, what really is. If we take it that we develop our personal version of reality by perceiving it through our senses, then it is this indirect perception what really detaches us from the reality that we are part of. In the course of civilization man has become conscious of that partial segregation and started to design his environment technically. We adapt the reality around us according to our needs. But the more we act upon it, the more we distance ourselves from it.
To overcome this 'detachment from reality' seems to be an important motivation for our attitude towards the world. An important way to seek for a reconnection is to communicate our version of reality. At best we can formulate an essence of our perceptions and perceive somebody else’s message. This particular form of communicating oneself, has its most general – and at the same time most specific – expression in (modern) art. In the same way communication about perceptions plays a crucial role in the expression of love (intimacy) or faith (religious transcendence). The artist expresses what he or she has to get across in the most specific possible way. A poet for example will reshape a phrase or term again and again until it says exactly what is on his or her mind, and thereby he will wrest it away from its everyday meaning and function.
A tag in graffiti is the writing of ones name. It’s also the most basic form of graffiti. It’s composed of letters which are given an individual shape. Despite this, it’s important that they remain legible. Already the selection of each letter is based on an intuitive recognition of the graphic statement that is brought about by its shape. Then a tag becomes the expression of a writer’s personality in the process of being rewritten and reshaped over a long period of time, like a consciously designed handwriting or signature. The resulting form of the whole, as well as the shape of the single characters, formulates the essence of an own version of reality.
The meaning we are used to associate with any word we read only distracts our perception from the relation of the writing’s graphic elements. This relation is what actually communicates the artistic message of the individually shaped letters. While those characters will always remain reducible to the original letter, the writer changes and reshapes the characters until they communicate an own, non-reversible statement. This process can be unconscious and ultimately is the reason for the creation of a tag. 

Minimalism and the São Paulo-Style of Pixação

'Pixação' (pronounce: peesha-soung –  from 'piche', Portuguese for tar, pitch) is the term that – with a rather negative connotation, and contrary to 'grafite', hardly ever associated with art – is commonly used for 'tagging' in Brazil. Besides São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro there is probably no other regional graffiti style. Normally every writer designs his or her own tag individually. In São Paulo as well as in Rio de Janeiro there is a proper style, unique to each city respectively. Distinctive of the São Paulo-style are the original writing tools: wall paint and a roller, as well as the single letters’ detachment from each other.  Also, in São Paulo writers reproduce their group’s name in the first place, and not the individual pseudonym.  
São Paulo-Pixação is, like the city, full of long straight lines and tight turns. Much emphasis is put on the single characters and their graphic message is particularly accentuated, because of the big distance between them. This layout is mainly due to the constructional elements on a building’s surface (windows, projections on the wall) which produce large interspaces. Thus the writings are usually set horizontally and well legible. As a distinctive deviation sometimes the vertical lines are very close-packed, whereas sometimes thin sprayed lines delineate a large continuous surface, that otherwise could be filled by a big 'piece'. The Rio-style is extremely abstract. Highly modified or distorted characters make up a compact writing which is sprayed. It’s said that this style also reflects the particular appearance of the city, which in Rio is dominated by the organic mixture of the urban structures of the metropolis and the wavy coastal landscape. Both styles developed independently from each other and other graffiti-movements. Everywhere else the writing depending on the form of graffiti applied (throw-up, piece) is accompanied by a figurative image. Pixação on the other hand is always only tag. 
The limitations of the writing tools in the São Paulo-style as well as the limited mobility require a more intense working of each letter’s shape to develop an own style, and their differences are more subtle. Thus the artistic message, the personal version of reality, becomes more precise. That holds for any tag. Considering the extreme stress some writers can be exposed to out on the street, that process which, as we said, is based on an existential need to communicate, might seem much more like one against reality, than one in search of it. But that’s not necessarily a contradiction, since work, self-realization and -assertion of the artist proceed on different, interpenetrating levels.
A São Paulo tag usually consists of 3 parts. Most prominent is the name of the tagger’s group. Often you can see also the emblem of the larger grouping the group belongs to. The group-names also can be written as short forms or symbols. Dwarfed between the huge characters sometime appears the writers own name or a personal note. The personal tag is much less elaborated than the one of the group and much less visible (while all said about the design process of a tag then applies to the group-tag accordingly). The names usually come from Brazilian slang, as for example: Vício, Escadão, RGS os Registrados, Lixomania!, Os Índios, Os Mamut's, Os Doidos, Os Bravos, Yugo's YGS, TMRS, Suspeitos, Vagais, Os 13, Sujões, Malditos, Malucos, Psicopatas, Alucinados, Fugas, Tropa Suicida, Via Mort, Guerra.1

Form, Medium, Signature

The 'language' of writing as a form of art or communication respectively and in particular tagging as artistic signature has its own sense of using the writing system (here that of the Latin alphabet) only to wrest it away from its conventional purpose. The graphical image of written letters becomes a surface that is pre-established by conventions of form. To this add other surface- and technical conditions like writing tools, social and architectonic texture. The (in)formational process inscribes itself into a medium or material consisting of given, conventional forms. To a lesser extent this can be said of the occasional semantic content, but although it is possible to identify names and words that have a more general meaning, the appearance of the writing and its signs remain being the criteria for style and recognizability (and recognition). 
The many different conditions that come into play with this inscription in – and coming to terms with – the 'surfaces of society' become very explicit in the Sao Paulo style of pixação. Its minimalism is based on strict rules due to the immediate and very real (socio-political) circumstances. Then that process through which the development of a signature is determined more or less intensely through the writers life (his social position as well as subcultural distinctions) is not so much about finally achieving ones own Identity, it’s not, as one might think, primarily about the creation of the perfect own pseudonym (which, as mentioned above, in the São Paulo-style is of secondary importance)
In some religions or belief systems the naming of god is impossible, forbidden or secreted. In others the ambivalence of the various deities doesn’t allow for determinate identification. What drives the above mentioned process is then is not identity, but a repeated and idiosyncratic wielding and forming of interrelated differences. That’s why it cannot come to an end. Like style and individuality it changes, gets stuck, or finds new and different forms, mediums, surfaces. 

Daniel Von and  z.one, August 2008

1 Concerning the groups and their names see the photo-books 
'Tssss... A grande arte da pixação em São Paulo' by Daniel Medeiros, Editora Clara Ltd. (ISBN 8599307088) and 
'Pixação: São Paulo Signature' by François Chastanet, XGpress (ISBN 978295628097).