Editorial: Stop tagging before it hits the wall

Opinion

Dogs are territorial. They mark their territory by leaving their presence against tree or lamp-post. Cats are territorial and signify their presence by spraying or scent-marking. Humans are territorial, too, but long ago most found more civilised ways of denoting the boundaries of their domains. The exceptions announce their presence in a manner that is no more sophisticated or civilised than a dog lifting its leg. They are taggers.

They should not be confused with graffiti artists. The modern manifestation, credited to a New York artist of the 1980s, can be an extraordinary expression of urban art. Before it came the clever phrases that made a social or political point or courageously stated "Viva Zapata". There is even an ancient equivalent in a neolithic tomb in the Orkney islands where a Viking raider scratched a humorous runic message on the wall. Taggers are none of these things and they are singularly without talent.

Had they creative ability they could turn their energies to something infinitely more productive than the daubings that they leave in the dead of night or furtively when no one is looking. Instead they deface public and private property in a way that speaks of social decline.

Parts of the country's largest urban area - beset by what is now a $6 million a year problem - are so festooned with tags that they have an air of decline about them. Tags suggest a breakdown in both social responsibility and observation of the law. Is that what some of Auckland's city centres and suburbs have come to? Do these scrawlings that deface our walls from ground level to the seemingly inaccessible suggest that as a society we are going backward? One of the difficulties in dealing with the problem seems to be that there is no ready means of deterring the taggers.

The only available solution - albeit one that local authorities work hard to provide - is the painting out or erasing of tags as soon as possible after they have been done. That, however, is the rub: the vandalism has occurred. The theory is that if a property-owner persists and assiduously removes every tag after it has been placed, the vandals will sooner or later get tired of having their marks removed and will move elsewhere. It is not, within the normal meaning of things, a solution. It merely moves the problem somewhere else. And even achieving that limited aim can put the property-owner or territorial authority to considerable cost. The use of anti-graffiti paint is effective but expensive.

Councils have different policies regarding their willingness to remove tags. Some support volunteer "paint-out" groups and many have educational programmes that inform children of the effects and costs of tagging. Youngsters are told that tagging is vandalism and a crime. All of these initiatives help but the problem persists and in some areas has reached proportions where neighbourhoods look like no-go areas. Upsurges often lead to calls for bans on spraypaint cans. New York applied stiff controls on them but it simply encouraged taggers to use ever more ingenious methods to apply their "smell" to a wall. And it made the flourishing of legitimate graffiti art more difficult. The ultimate solution must lie elsewhere, even though the tougher measures being sought by Manukau City will aid in the fight.

Tags are an attempt to achieve peer recognition. They are, if you like, pathetic attempts to achieve the 15 minutes of fame that pop artist Andy Warhol dangled in front of the young and impressionable. Taggers get their "buzz" from notoriety. The more they are decried, the more famous they feel. The only way tagging will be stopped before it hits the wall is by removing the effect it endeavours to achieve. If, instead of recognition, tagging is seen as the work of a nobody, it might go away. It is a communication that must run through the community, helped, one hopes, by sports personalities and entertainers who can impart a message that will be heard. The message is that taggers are poor, sad losers.