Graffiti is material at the level of the group. Haven’t we all had dreams that, after waking, leave us feeling vandalized? These dreams are difficult to analyze, they can seem illegible. We might go so far as to disown the dream entirely or avoid sharing certain details with our analyst. 

Lacan could just as well be speaking about graffiti when he says, “Sometimes, the messenger is confused with the message.” The vandal is confused with their vandalism. Tags are also names. The artist’s signature is confused with the work of art. The ornamentation is part and parcel of the morpheme; it may make understanding more difficult while imbuing the word with its specific meaning as such. Graffiti, like dreams, evade complete transcription. Graffiti, like dreams, can be analyzed.

The Oceanwide Plaza in downtown Los Angeles consists of three high-rise towers. Initially funded by Beijing-based Oceanwide Holdings Co., Ltd, construction stopped in 2019 when funding ran out. The towers have remained unfinished, but not empty. In 2024 the windows of the towers began to fill with graffiti. Initially, tags were painted on their own floor, until larger tags began to fill up multiple floors, with efforts being made to have the largest tag, occupying the most real estate, on the highest floors. 

Where is a city’s unconscious? Architectural historian Reyner Banham marked out the four ecologies of Los Angeles in 1971: Surfurbia, Foothills, Autopia, and Plains of Id. Banham saw the “endless plains” of the San Gabriel and San Fernando valleys as where “the crudest urban lusts and most fundamental aspirations are created, manipulated, and, with luck, satisfied.” But, much has changed in LA since the 70’s and psychic compromises to urban lusts have caused ecological shifts.

In the words of William Mulholland on the opening of the aqueduct to the San Gabriel Valley, “There it is, take it!” With the fantasies of development being frustrated by the Real, a lack of available land, a structural shift is made — a psychic compromise — from horizontal sprawl to vertical penetration. 

The unexpected penetration of our psyche by a dream: “How is it that nobody has ever thought of connecting this with . . . the effect of an erection? Imagine a tattoo traced on the sexual organ ad hoc in the state of repose and assuming its, if I may say so, developed form in another state” (Lacan).

References

Banham, R. (2001). Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. University of California Press.

Lacan, J. (1998). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI,. Vintage.