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Beyond the passages of involved academic rhetoric, there are pops of contrast in others that read as if they are being read out loudly by Schacter, as if he were standing on a big block of rebar-sprouting concrete addressing a modest audience in a forgotten nighttime edgeland; they’re animated, lively, and they need you there, reading carefully. And there are other moments that read like lucid conversations a shoulders-width apart, spoken over the noise of traffic as you wander with Schacter through daylight-streets seeing the city like you have never seen it before; it’s introspective, personal, eye-opening and it reads like it would be going on whether you were there or not, you’re a passenger on his journey. It’s not clear if these different registers are intentional or if they have come to be clipped and pasted together over the many years of research, writing and editing that make up this appropriately palimpsest-like thesis on graffiti. Regardless, they are compelling and seemingly written without being self-conscious of their effects.

Monumental Graffiti targets the pacifying of public interactions brought about by the malformation of the city as an ascetic site for privatisation; something in direct conflict with the city as a communal place of habitation. As such, more than a gesture, or an individual’s voice or personal expression, or else vandalism and senseless crime, for Schacter, graffiti is a monument to participation, and to a presence that might not fit well with the smooth aesthetic of the well-designed cityscape. As such, graffiti is a monument “to our right to the city itself”. Because graffiti is, by its material nature, an “impermanent monument” it has no nostalgic trappings, as Schacter says, it is “speaking in the present tense”. Therefore, thinking about the present as a moment when many are needing to urgently reimagine the aesthetics of resistance, dissensus, alterity, and otherness, Monumental Graffiti is required reading.

Read the full review here.