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 Street Signatures —Tags and Throw ups In Graffiti 

by Jeanne Decamps

Graffiti, derived from the Italian word “graffito”, which means scratch, was used by archaeologists to categorise ancient drawings or writings engraved on walls, usually without permission. However, the conception of graffiti we have today only came about in the late 1960s, arising in cities such as New York and Philadelphia. What started with graffiti writers marking down their tags on walls and trains, quickly changed into a game of who could leave the most visible mark. Writers around the world drew influence from a fusion of hip-hop, punk rock and street subcultural elements. 

Tagging is an approach to graffiti characterised by the usage of a moniker written in a particular manner and style. Common tools used by tag writers include markers such as paint markers, mops, solid markers, metal tipped pens, and of course, spray paint cans. One of the earliest pioneers of tagging was Darryl McCray, who used the moniker “Cornbread.” He began tagging in 1965 on the walls of his reform school in Philadelphia, then on the walls across the Juvenile Institutions he often was placed in, allowing him to gain prominence. Once he had begun writing on every wall in his neighbourhood, he pushed the concept of graffiti by pulling stunts such as the alleged tagging of an elephant with removable paint at the Philadelphia Zoo. Another notable early writer is TAKI 183, who formed his moniker through a blend of his birth name and his street number, inspired by a previous local writer, Julio 204. Though he began his tagging career before TAKI 183, Julio 204 kept his tag localized, unlike TAKI 183, who went “All City”. 

Competition between taggers to be the most visible created the perfect conditions for creativity, as artists would take leaps in their tag placement and stylistic choices to become more recognizable. Over the years, these stylistic choices began to create distinct handstyles that were often unique to writers or the area they originated from. Examples include Philly handstyle, originating in Philadelphia, which was characterised by unique, stretched, vertically elongated lettering painted in very few, if not one, line. Often, these types of tags give a dynamic feel and almost cursive look, making it more abstract to read. 

Out of the San Francisco Bay Area developed the bus handstyle, where writers would tag on a bus and while doing so, be affected by the movement of their ride. Attributes of this handstyle include rounded typography; often loops in letters such as K, M or R and equal evenly sized letters. 

Outside of the United States, other styles also began to develop, such as the Brazilian graffiti known as Pichação. Following the concept of the visibility of a tag, Pichação pushes its limits by often appearing on tall buildings. The height of these buildings required a unique approach to tagging, in which writers would often work in crews to scale buildings, employing paint rollers and windows ledges as leverage. What is of particular interest in Pichação tags is their unique political context. Writers would often tag buildings that were economically out of reach for them, creating a distinctive form of civil disobedience. Influences on this style include a unique combination of Scandinavian and Gothic-style typefaces implemented by bands such as Judas Priest and Led Zeppelin. Other influences include punk hardcore bands such as The Exploited and The Dead Kennedys. 

From  around 1972 to 1973, tags began to develop into throw-ups, also known as pieces. Not unlike tags, speed became of the essence when it came to throw-ups, but this time the art became bigger and bolder. Shortly after, different styles and concepts of throw-ups designs began developing, for example, bubble letters. These are marked by the manner in which the letters are drawn and expanded to have a balloon, or bubble like appearance, as the name suggests. The exact person to be credited for this innovation is debated to be writers such as Phase Two and Jester & Comet. Throw-ups often utilised different tools than tags did. Writers began to swap out their markers for paint rollers and spray paint cans in order to achieve that bigger look and fill in colour as fast as they could. The spaces that writers would target also began to change, as throw-ups required more space, often being found on the walls of trains or on advertisement billboards. 

The tag and throw-up differentiation is only one of the many that exists in the world of graffiti. As an art form, graffiti will always develop to reflect the imagination and skills of its artist. However, one thing that will never change is graffiti’s distinctive role in mankind’s need to leave a mark wherever they go.

When the Microphone Became a Sword: The Grammys

By Konstancija Kevisaite

A camera click, a smile, and a gentle nod… You have finally arrived at the Grammys.

How does one explain the feeling before you go on the stage? The flickering lights and the hushed voices, tiptoeing close to the curtains and the rush of glamorous life? A set of microphones, lined up in a numerical order, is watched by a careful backstage crew eye. Glitters and powder, the last bits of the shaping of a perfect angle, can be felt in the dense air. Time stops for an hour when the blinding camera flashes and the stars gather for a bathroom selfie.

Imagine that tonight, you, the reader, are at the Grammys—one of the most awaited events in the music industry every year. As events unfold, let yourself be guided by the question: if the world’s a stage and the men and women are merely players, why did the Grammys 2026 stage become a place to take off masks and stand together for what is important at the core?

Where does the fairytale start and where does it end?

The story of this year’s Grammys will not start with “once upon a time,” as no shoe was lost in the process, and the daily news headlines that reached silenced inboxes are as far from a happy ending as possible. Today’s political arena is influencing many artists to adopt stronger narratives in their lyrics, focusing on the values that are supposed to underpin a modern society. Three themes guided the 2026 award ceremony: immigration, identity, and human rights. They were proudly displayed on artists’ chests with “ICE Out” pins. Celebrities such as Billie Eilish, Finneas, Justin Bieber, Hailey Bieber, and Kahlani incorporated these small circular statements in their final award looks. However, the real political solidarity marked on stage was the golden trophies and hearts full of gratitude for the opportunities brought by immigration, an environment that shaped identities, and humans that made it all possible to be on stage that night.

Who decides who belongs in the kingdom? If heroes once arrived as outsiders, why stop others now?

You get to sit at the table as you squeeze the dainty invitation in your secret pocket, and the fear starts to rise. I do not know these people. Do I belong? In this hypothetical scenario, you do, but what about the migrants outside the building? The ones who are not invited to sit at the neatly decorated table?

Well, the spectators on the sidelines were not left to their own devices; they were addressed in multiple speeches, starting with Bad Bunny (Benito Martínez Ocasio), the first-ever Spanish-language winner of Album of the Year with Debí Tirar Más Fotos. He started by addressing his native land, Puerto Rico, in Spanish and thanking his mother for giving birth there. Yet, in the middle of his speech, the artist switched to English and dedicated the award “to all the people who had to leave their homeland, their country, to follow their dreams. To all the people who have lost a loved one and, even so, have had to move forward, and continue with great strength, this award is for you.” Bad Bunny did not stop there, criticising ICE and appealing to the public by stating that “the only thing more powerful than hate is love,” which also became the core message during his Super Bowl LX performance later on Feb. 8. The album itself touches on topics such as cultural pride, heritage protection amid colonial tensions, and undertones of migration and diaspora.

Another key celebrity and princess of the night was Olivia Dean, a notable British newcomer, who was awarded Best New Artist. Calling herself the granddaughter of an immigrant (her maternal grandmother is from Guyana), the artist also described herself as “a product of bravery”, celebrated immigrants and emphasised that people are nothing without each other’s support. This directly corresponds to her newest album, The Art of Loving, which addresses human imperfections in relationships, embraces emotional growth, and seeks to prove that love is more of a practice than a feeling.

Lastly, Lola Young, winner of Best Pop Solo Performance for her song ‘Messy’, made a supportive claim about mental health, highlighting the world’s instability. She invited artists to keep on creating and not to conform to certain ideologies, but rather to resonate with one another.

​So, when the applause fades, does the message remain?

Of course, no one is safe from criticism. Social media influencers, such as Emily Austin, and even the President of the United States, publicly stated that the event fell short. Yet, after all is said and done, if it were your turn to go on stage… would you consider the real magic to be the trophy, or the courage to speak up?

The Poem

by Yi Xuan Tan

<Keep it snowing>

* Very much inspired by my winter travel to Budapest and Munich

Source: Author

I was not sure I knew what snow was,

Until it found me in Eastern Europe;

Until snowflakes dampened my hair

and the postcards in my arms,

like fallen petals of Eden,

Until my boots were swallowed in white,

footsteps behind me erased.

Until my ears heard nothing but wind

and the distant clock through the crowd.

Until the glow of the Hungarian Parliament dimmed inside a storm. 

I stood, as many voyagers had before,

like a winter tree,

and joy rinsed over me. 

Perhaps, from the sight of heaven,

We were snowflakes of the town,

drifting swiftly,

Through its light.

So keep it snowing,

Till the street lights fall apart.

On my train back home, I realised that my glove was missing one side, 

I guess I chose to trade them for the views along the road.

For the snow, 

to keep it snowing.

King Leopold’s (Un)civilizing Mission

by Elena Hayashi

“Slavery had come to an end throughout most of the world for one reason only: British virtue” (P.27). Despite the formal abolition of slavery by imperial powers by the late 19th century, the Scramble of Africa proved to be as dehumanising as the slave trade. In King Leopold’s Ghost, Adam Hochschild documents how the Congo Free State — presented as a humanitarian, philanthropic project — transformed into a system of exploitation and terror. Central to this transformation were the views recorded by Henry Morton Stanley, an American explorer and journalist whose travel writings portrayed Africa as in-need-of European civilization. Such representations shaped European public opinion, fostering a sense of racial superiority. The brutal extraction of labor and resources hence was framed as necessary and morally justified; necessary, by being purported to lift up the uncivilized, and justified, because the standards of civilization were defined purely by the colonizers.

“Unpeopled country”: this was the phrase that Stanley famously used to describe the continent of Africa. Africa, a place rich in culture and history was trashed by the imperial powers to be disregarded as an empty space (P.31). As an international celebrity, Stanley’s words carried enormous authority and influence on views of Africans. His description of them as lazy and cannibal-like animals allowed U.S. senators like John Morgan to see Leopold’s new state as “heaven-sent” for the growing population of freed black slaves (and send them back to Africa, their ‘uncivilised’ community) (P.79). Supported by Social Darwinism, a pseudo-scientific ideology that applied Charles Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the Fittest” in socio-political spheres, such accumulation of inferior thoughts of Africa essentially made it easier for them to dominate the natives, as they were no longer considered as human beings but rather wild vicious animals to be kept in captivity by the civilised, Western people. Hochschild demonstrates as to why the mission of Africans forced to help in the ivory trade for Belgium wasn’t considered as ‘for profit’, but rather to, “rescue these benighted people from their indolence” (P.118). 

The whole civilising mission of Africa (in focus, Belgian Congo) was outstandingly filled with brutality. The countries that had patted themselves on the back for abolishing slavery, turned to an alternative solution of keeping themselves in power — indentured labour. Porters who were utilised to increase profit were “sickly, drooping under a burden increased by tiredness and insufficient food…beasts of burden with thin monkey legs” (P.119). As one of the few reliable sources that weren’t told from Leopold’s servants’ perspective, it was devastating to read the porters’ physical and mental deterioration of health, who were eventually dazed with exhaustion. The ability of the imperialists to treat them in such a barbarous way opposes their so-called civilising mission, and is something that cannot be justified with their sense of superiority.

“In payment for rubber…I could eat them, or kill them, or use them as slaves — as I liked” (P.164). In the Congo Free State, the gathering of rubber was paid in exchange for human beings. The imperial powers were so blood-thirsty for rubber that they slaughtered millions of innocent native Africans. In a way, the number of hands brought back by the army was treated as proof of hard work and loyalty, but also as a way to remind the uncivilised Africans that they were under the authority of the civilised Europeans. 

Hochschild’s novel is powerful for its moral indictment but also for its emotional narrative. By weaving together academic research with compelling storytelling techniques, he helps reconstruct a history obscured by self-justification narratives. The native Africans were exploited and violently oppressed by the imperial powers not just for economic growth, but also as a way to prove themselves more worthy and civilised than the rest of humanity. Europeans’ view of moral superiority developed through Stanley’s accounts allowed them to colonise the ‘empty lands of Africa’, intentionally used to justify the immoral practices undertaken in the Belgian Congo by King Leopold. Ultimately, King Leopold’s Ghost demonstrates the illusion of the civilising mission — an ideological mask that provided unscrupulous justifications to the horrible working and living conditions of the native Africans.

Bibliography

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold’s Ghost : A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Mariner Books, 1998.

The representation of the sea in Arts 

by Lisa Ledieu

The ocean covers approximately 70% of the Earth. Water composes up to 60% of our bodies. H₂O, by its chemical name, has an undeniable place in human life and in the environment. Essential to survival, water is also often perceived as a motherly figure, recalling our primary state in the womb. It is a source of tranquility for the mind: looking at the sea in the distance, taking a dive in scorching weather, or even a bath to ward off the cold. It has long been a subject of human fascination as well as of representation. Thus, the aim of this article is to explain how water, especially the sea, is a core theme in art through some of its most important — yet not exhaustive — forms. Starting with painting, followed by writings and cinema, this paper seeks to offer the sea a moment of admiration, before concluding with a reflection on the necessity of protecting it. 

The sea in paintings 

Variable movements and periods of painting have taken the sea as their subject, giving birth to radically different representations of it. One can find Cubist or Expressionist pieces, but also Ukiyo-e works, and the list goes on. From this wide range, we will take a closer look at two artworks: Les Falaises de Varangeville (1897) by Claude Monet and Les Iles d’or (1891-1892) by Henri-Edmond Cross. The first, an Impressionist work, can be seen in the MuMa in Le Havre. The sea remains in the background; yet the way it is treated reveals its importance for this movement. Impressionism is indeed characterized by an effort to capture light’s reflection on different surfaces. Thus, water, and here the sea, becomes the perfect medium. In Monet’s paintings, and not only in Les Falaises de Varangeville, it is omnipresent (his Etretat’s works are also telling examples). Colors are manipulated to render different weather conditions, seasons and hours, modifying the way light reflects upon the sea. In Cross’ Neo-Impressionist Les Iles d’or, this time set not in Normandy but in the south of France near Hyères, the treatment of paint produces a different effect. In comparison with Monet’s work, the colors are more vibrant, accentuating the probable heat while the sea, in a deeper blue, presents itself as Mediterranean, leaving behind the agitated waters of the Channel. Whether calm or turbulent, the sea emerges in painting as a space of artistic inquiry, gradually offering painters an inexhaustible ground for visual experimentation. 

The sea in writings

If the sea is often used as a setting in which a story takes place, it can also become the very core of a work. Here we might turn to La mer écrite (1996) by Marguerite Duras and Mizu no sōretsu (1967) by Akira Yoshimura. Both authors take the sea as their source of inspiration, honoring it in their own way. Marguerite Duras, on the one hand, observes nature, and most importantly the sea, during her walks (some in towns of Upper Normandy) using these moments to write intimate reflections on her surroundings. The sea is personified, becoming a real character in her narratives, sometimes even deliberately intertwined with the word “mère” (‘mother’), which is pronounced the same way as “mer”(‘sea’). The text is accompanied by photographs by Hélène Bamberger, blending images and writing as a tribute to the maternal sea. Two revealing and moving extracts illustrate this: 

 ‘The sea remained there, proper, discrete, perfect, invisible, eternal.’

‘It’s the sea. It has taken everything. […] It moves with time, just as if that were possible.’

On the other hand, Akira Yoshimura portrays the sea as a powerful and violent force, successfully associating it with death itself, unavoidable. The story contrasts two groups of individuals: one summoned to construct a hydroelectric dam, and the other fiercely defending their village from the flooding that such a construction would bring. It is a telluric narrative that anticipates modern environmental concerns, despite having been written decades ago. Overall, both works place the sea at the heart of their stories, confirming its role as a key artistic element. More broadly, these examples show how literature can transform the sea from mere setting into a force that shapes narrative and meaning. 

The sea in films 

Cinema is in itself a convergence of artistic mediums, offering spectators the opportunity to experience photography, music, storytelling, poetry, and even, in some ways, painting. Like each of these forms, the seventh art can take the sea as its subject. Through its pluridisciplinarity, it is able to capture the sea as an image, accompanied by text and music, the whole becoming a unified artwork. As examples, we will consider La Pointe Courte (1955) by Agnès Varda and Flow (2024) by Gints Zilbalodis. A precursor to the French New Wave movie, La Pointe Courte is set in the eponymous fishing district of Sète, in the south of France. Beyond presenting the sea as a central topic, the film also depicts the reality of fishermen’s lives. Around the main love story unfolds a political crisis that highlights the harsh economic conditions of the working class as well as the vulnerability of the sea, threatened by overfishing (echoing our own era). The film thus brings forward a reflection on both political and environmental issues. On the other side of the shore, Flow, an animated film whose main protagonist is a black cat terrified by water. We follow him as his surroundings are gradually submerged by a wild and rising ocean. Losing companions along the way, oscillating between hope and despair, the character embodies a broader anxiety about climate change. The film invites us to question ourselves and, ultimately, to identify with him: what would we do if one day we were to be swept away by the very sea which we have abused?

A reflection on climate change 

The human-caused changes that threaten our environment should strike us even more forcefully when we take the time to admire nature. This article has sought, if only momentarily, to place the sea at the center of our thoughts. Let us try to keep nature in a corner of our minds; it may help us resist indifference and egoism. Let us look at the sea more often, and be grateful for its presence. And therefore, let us strive to respect it, in return for all it has silently given us. 

Bibliography: