Acts of art. As told on the TV news, vandalism ruled the day last November 30, when tens of thousands of protesters shut down the World Trade Organization and created a state of emergency in downtown Seattle. Vandalism is an intentional violation, the defacement of something deemed valuable by others, but we know, too, that it can be a form of expression. Vandalism is young lovers carving their names in the bark of a tree, a street youth tagging a four-star hotel, anarchists kicking in the windows of Niketown. Could any art form of our age offer a shred of hope for escape without a direct confrontation with property, the core value around which each of us is driven to build a sense of self.
Vandalism is a kind of parasitism born from the essence of millennial western civilization.
In our current culture we stand fractured, manipulated by technology and commercial interests. We are commercial projects of meaning. We are host organisms and commodity culture is the parasite. Sapped of community and humanity, we have come to believe that we depend on our parasite for identity. The vandal undermines commercial meaning.