Brilliant spray paint on top of dumb ads. Honest AF memoirs. Carving ratty iconography into expensive crap. Raw feelings. Zines shoved into propagandic materials. Vital articulations of human sensation. SCREAMING. Bathroom sharpie messages proliferating out in the wild. Loitering with intent to defile. Stuff that gets the pearls CLUTCHED. Sculptures in unpermitted places. Creative destruction in new and novel forms. Snarling disdain manifested cheaply, eloquently, quickly, purely, beautifully: this is dirtbag vandalism and it is coming for ALL the interfaces near you. It is the NEXT BIG THING and always has been.
And here is why that’s great and you should join in:
1
BIG INEVITABILITY:
When they have no mentors, artists teach themselves how to do art.
AND THAT PROCESS IS GORGEOUSLY AND OBVIOUSLY VICIOUSLY RATTY.
No commercial work available? No industry standards (because there are no industries)? No rules or canon or guidance of creative instinct? Get ready for a lot of raw expression, because if nobody is willing to help refine it, it’s still happening, just wilder.
2
BIG HUMANITY:
Dirtbag expression is our (YOUR) default setting.
Human art happens. It’s like pooping or exhaling. This is just how humans are: they do art. Abstinence-only education did not prevent any perverts from being themselves. Art-free education did not (and cannot) eradicate the creatives. No human instinct can be permanently repressed by rhetoric, only shoved underground (where it festers and eventually erupts in a messier and less agreeable form).
3
BIG NEED:
There’s an authenticity vacuum sucking LOUDLY right now.
When 99.999999% of posters and ads and shirts and packaging and politics and signage and messaging of all leverageable sorts reads immediately as inhuman and corporate and grifty and botty and and blatantly untrue and MOST OF ALL STUPID, the raw personality of a stealthy bit of artistic vandalism feels honest and legit in a way that demands respect and encourages EVEN MORE dirtbag art production. So it’s gonna happen A LOT MORE going forward. If artists don’t get permission, they get MORE crafty and artistic and resourceful, not less. Watch out and enjoy the show.
4
BIG GATEBUSTING:
There’s no committee attached to individual dirtbag expression.
He said what he said. She said what she said. Nobody said they could say it. They just, PUT IT OUT THERE BECAUSE THEY WERE COMPELLED. There’s no A/B testing on dirtbag expression. No higher-up (whatever THAT ARROGANTLY INFERS) approval process in place. No running numbers on the ROI of the messaging. No grants written to tag a wall. Not pats on the head to reward the art that nobody asked for but everyone needs.
Dirtbag vandalism does what it wants without any kind of financial or cultural blessings and that’s why it feels so refreshingly interesting. Dirtbags are not seeking consensus in order to create, they are creating in order to express. Follow the money away from its source to find the most beauty being made today.
5
BIG EGALITARIANISM:
Dirtbag vandalism is magnificently inviting.
No pre-fed feeds. No algorithmic censorship. It’s just on the DAMN WALL. It’s just OUT THERE WHERE ANYBODY CAN SEE IT. It’s not a part of anybody’s narrow bubble or an anybody’s highly curated audience profile, not part of a financially astute campaign or a product launched by ROI-maximizing spreadsheets. Dirtbag vandalism steamrolls gatekeepers because it meets people where they are in the world, not where they are in a claustrophobically isolating demographic-psychographic-monetizing-spreadsheet.
6
BIG CONNECTION:
Dirtbags stick together and pull together.
While media-buyers ask, “Who do we need to reach in order to compel another five percent growth in sales of disposable product this quarter?” dirtbags ask, “How do I let the other dirtbags out there know how not to kill themselves and to merrily and bravely change the world for the weirdly better instead?” We are legion. We must assemble.
And guess what? The olds, the poors, the weirdos, the normies—sometimes they see some magical dirtbag stuff and they think, “I GET THAT.” The dirtbag bat-signals defy categories and stereotypes because it’s more magical than financial of a message. Dirtbag-ism is is the biggest tent there is because we are all hedonistic clowns, at our cores.
7
BIG REDEMPTION:
Dirtbag vandalism heals a sickness we didn’t even realize we were suffering from.
After consuming culture strained through the razor-sharp cash-extracting sieves designed to remove all possible honesty, emotion, friction, and artfulness, people are coming down with cultural scurvy. Dirtbag vandalism is the lemon juice of our time. Just a little bit helps our souls reassemble and function in ways the gruel of “this is FINE” BAU messaging purposefully prevents.
LIVE. LAUGH. LOVE. KILLS. Dirtbag vandalism is the cure.
8
BIG PARTICIPATION:
So buy some art supplies. Use them everywhere.
Mock the stupid things and organizations you see. Scrawl the caption you said in your head to confound a lie you see printed on a wall. Derail a “customer journey” designed without organic people in mind (thus solving the trolley problem at its start). Be the magical and artistic dirtbag you want to see in the world. You’ll sleep better at night and move lighter by day.
Full pockets, full hearts, wet markers, can’t lose.
9
BIG POTENTIAL:
“But wait,” you say, “I’m not a vandal. I’m not an artist. I am not built for that. I like behaving and cashing my checks.”
GOOD NEWS, LARVAL DIRTBAG. Your artsy, feral friends, the ones nobody ever mentored, the ones who are NONETHELESS good at wheatpasting and spraypainting and breaking expensive things—they will teach you. They know how much it matters that you learn to express yourself. You are next to be iconic. Your voice needs their hard-learned crafty amplification. You have wings you have yet to move, just waiting to form. Plus, we need lookouts to warn us when (not if) Karens and cops and cameras are watching us make art.
Anyway, I’m going to KINKOS to get some print outs. Call me if you need me. You can borrow my Exacto knives anytime.
10
BIG CAPTURE:
What starts small gets co-opted. We have to lean into the corporate seizure of artistic energy to steer it toward where we dirtbags want to go.
The minority lingo becomes a headline. ALWAYS. The micro-trend becomes a macrocore. ALWAYS. The culture becomes a commodity. ALWAYS.
We dirtbags know this. We exude raw magic anyway. We artists know our work will be seen and reworked into less-magical content that makes us angry and sad.
Knowing this, we must be strategic and relentless.
WE CAN THROW OPEN THE OVERTON WINDOWS. We just have to keep making and saying and shoving the beautiful, honest, human truths into the corporate maws of in-house marketing departments.
Dirtbag art ALWAYS trickles up (even when money refuses to do the same). Dirtbag vandalism is too raw and real and sexy and fun to be ignored. Keep making messes and statements and problems today and you will change the statements you hear and the problems you see in the future.
Art supplies win all the wars. Keep vandalizing.
Eventually.
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