Episode 20: Graffiti

Tuesday, January 24th, 2017
For this episode let us join the hitman of history, Dr. Sam Willis, and the Donatello of dates, Professor James Daybell, as they shake up their aerosol cans and spray paint the unexpected history of graffiti. Our very own Banksy and Scampi will take you on a journey from Plymouth and Brexit vandalism to SS. Great Britain and the gold rush of the 1850s, from Totnes Castle and World War Two prisoners to a Cambridgeshire church and the plague year of 1515, and from modern day Iranian street art to the Emin minaret in Turpan, China.
Sam and James will throw-up the tags to discover that this unexpected history is actually all about: boredom, identity, communication, repression, expression, social emancipation, symbolism, territory, counter-cultural propaganda, and hidden voices. Want to find out where to look for examples of graffiti? You may want to head to the cubicles of the men’s toilets of Oxford’s Bodleian Library , take a notebook and pen to record the most intellectual and erudite of graffiti!
‘Romanes eunt domus’, people called Romanes, they go, the house?’
Vocative plural of ‘Romanus’ is? …
…‘Romani ite domum’
Now write it out a hundred times’ (John Cleese and Graham Chapman, Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’)
‘All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars’. (Banksy)
- Emin Mosque Turpan
- Example of Chinese Characters – Emin Mosque, Turpan
- Example of Islamic script – Emin Mosque, Turpan
- Islamic script and Chinese characters – Emin Mosque Turpan
- Example of graffiti – SS. Great Britain.
- Graffiti – SS. Great Britain – 1850.
- Example of graffiti carved into wood – SS. Great Britain
- Sam – Yazd, Iran
- Yazd, Iran – street art
- Iran – Street Art
- Iranian Street Art – Stencil
- Iranian Street Art
- Iranian Street Art
- Iran – street art
- Samarkand
- Totnes Castle – graffiti
- Cambridgeshire Church Plague Graffiti
- Juliet Fleming, Graffit and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England
- Matthew Champion, Medieval Graffiti- The Lost Voices of England’s Churches
- Medieval Graffiti in England – ship
- Sedgeford, Norfolk. Church graffiti
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