In spite of everything, other than graffiti, we now generate little non-virtual proof of our present civilisation and ideas. We do not put pen to paper anymore, print is passe and even brush-to-canvas is giving option to screens. Social media outpourings, good forwards, humour, sarcasm, commentaries, critiques and AI-generated fakes might not survive the obsolescence of the devices they’re created by and stay confined to. So our period’s epitaphs could be graffiti.
As soon as this realisation dawns, all of us will wish to secretly etch our names, feelings and views on actual partitions as an alternative of simply on social media partitions. For, it may very well be the one option to bridge millennia to speak with folks sooner or later. What they make of our graffiti is one other matter, however these maudlin declarations of affection, bulletins of presence and messily scratched initials, not merely the artsy style of Banksy, could be civilisational semaphores of our instances.
Admittedly although, ideas of millennial immortality might not have been what motivated Thiru Korran to announce that he had visited an imperial Egyptian necropolis 1,800 years in the past. He couldn’t have anticipated the avalanche of questions his scrawls at eight locations in Egypt set off, any greater than a Shivansh etching his ardour for Riya at a well-liked vacationer spot someplace overseas in 2026 would realise he may set off pleasure and curiosity in, say, 3026.
And but the easy phrase “Cikai Korran vara kantan (got here and noticed)”, the Tamil equal of the most common Greek graffiti of the time discovered on the identical Egyptian venues – precursor to the “Kilroy was right here” scribbles of World Struggle II – has grow to be the stuff of deep tutorial discussions and displays at worldwide conferences by Indian and international students. Additionally they, in fact, point out that tourism is a far older pastime than most of us realise.
Certainly, the urge to discover and depart private marks on the canvas of time have been the dual motivators of our species, proved by the 1000’s of graffiti inscribed by foreigners to Egypt’s monuments down the centuries. Their sheer antiquity (the oldest discovered to this point date to the sixth century BCE) signifies how deeply graffiti is ingrained within the human psyche. They’re the mental heirs of the cave work that information our understanding of prehistoric people.
The significance of what’s hewn into arduous, tangible surfaces in a time when most of human info and communication has ‘dematerialised’ is manifest. Like Cikai Korran’s laconic traces or expansive Ashokan edicts, these might be what we’re judged by. Positioning, distribution, topic, gender illustration and high quality of engraving will dictate the long run’s impression of us; flubs would condemn our period to scorn from generations but unborn. It’s a sobering prospect.
An official rethink on the difficulty is warranted. Historical graffiti are lavished with care and scholarly consideration whereas trendy ones are subjected to robust cleansing fluids and steep fines for perpetrators, if caught. This discrimination ought to stop. By dismissing graffiti as visible litter and ordering their effacement, we may very well be erasing essential civilisational information of our instances. Is there a case for selective preservation based mostly on evaluation of possible future relevance?
