The Washington Post of 14th July 2005 devoted an article to the notorious graffitist “Borf”, who had apparently contacted them in order to discuss his motives and perspectives. This article appeared following the arrest of John Tsombikos, alleged to be the perpetrator of this campaign.
The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that Borf is an advertiser, in the most literal and banal sense of the word. He only differs from other advertisers in advertising whatever he thinks appropriate, without being troubled by commercial considerations. His work captures, almost exactly, the tone proper to advertising, at once obvious and oblique; whimsical sayings like “Borf is good for your liver” or “Borf writes letters to your children”.
It goes without saying that the Washington Post article had no ambition of offering a critique of advertising as a whole, which frequently presents a muddled mix of ideas, is rarely enlightening, and obviously costs the city a lot of money.
Instead they restricted themselves to criticising the affectations of this particular advertiser, in an appropriately condescending tone, since the article necessarily addresses itself to readers with diverse points of view; those readers who recognise a creativity and political engagement that official art frequently promises but rarely delivers, as well as those readers naturally affronted by a vandal with so little respect for private property, capitalism and the state.
The resulting article more or less resembles the rehash of a standard tract against any public intellectual espousing a muddled mix of progressive ideas, with the names and particular circumstances inserted as an afterthought. It could just as easily be a critique of Chandler from Friends. What is incredible is that all this is invoked against an eighteen-year-old kid.
Borf, it is shown, is as immersed in capitalist surplus value as fish are in water. The Washington Post duly provides a fairly exhaustive list of bourgeois affectations: he is overprivileged “sometimes when he parked in the city his parents gave him $14 for the garage”; he is a pedant “Borf seemed quite conscientious about matters of spelling and punctuation” and an obscurantist “he drew inspiration from children’s author Shel Silverstein and from something called situationism, an obscure avant-garde movement popularized in 1960’s France”; a vegetarian “eating a vegetarian burger from Ben’s Chili Bowl”; he is against fashion “his clothes are usually frumpy” (although perhaps this could have something to do with the tendency of a graffitist’s clothing to become “speckled with paint”); his politics, while earnest, are necessarily muddled: the Washington Post, invoking an incongruous juxtaposition worthy of Lautreamont (a mix filtered through a lens) describes them as “an earnest though sometimes muddled mix of progressive politics filtered through a lens of youthful optimism” (this youthful optimism which asserts that “the status quo is maintained and perpetuated by a series of spectacles”); he is pretentious, merely aspiring to ideas “he really wanted to be an anarchist”. He is also an incorrigible narcissist, a serious allegation indeed from a paper not noted for its disdain of celebrities in general; the Washington Post offers this piece of psychological analysis: “he is Borf, master illusionist, omnipresent but invisible”. The cops evidently concurred with this view when, following a plan straight out of an airport detective novel, they placed an “I saw you ad” in the Washington City Paper “who are you BORF?…let’s meet”.
What the Washington Post has managed to produce is a critique of the ideology of Borf without examining the content of his ideas. Considering the extraordinary good fortune enjoyed by all young people today, it is entirely mysterious why an eighteen-year-old might consciously oppose the state, private property, capitalism and globalisation. Since all reality is already subsumed by the Washington Post, it is obviously the height of pretentiousness to refer to a number of obscure currents of thought about which the Post generally has nothing to say. From this perspective it is not at all surprising that the Washington Post finds it easy to say that this campaign “may have been intended to enlighten Washington, but mostly just confused us”.
The Washington Post of the 24th November reports a court appearance by John Tsombikos, alleged to be responsible for the Borf graffiti. Mr Tsombikos is due to return to court for a further hearing on the 7th December.
