We spend the weekend washing down the walls, but still the words are visible. If anything, they’re clearer, standing out like the top line of an eye chart, or like secrets written in lemon juice and held to a flame. It’s not clear who painted them there, or why. It could have been the kids in hoodies who come on their monkey bikes, wheelieing in the flickering security lights: or it could be the angry men – it’s always men – in their surplus combats, their heads wound in grubby keffiyehs. Or, of course, it could be any of the Banksy wannabes waging guerilla war on collapsing capitalism since the art school was sold off for a pop-up prison. Why do they do it? We’re miles and miles away across the mythical wounded land, anonymous hermits in a forgotten romance fragment, where neither the police nor the most committed codicologist will come to look. And what does is say, anyway? For all our detergent and elbow grease, the words are stark as fire or blood, but in all this futile labour, we’ve forgotten how to read.
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Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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