bark/bite

If you worked or lived or shopped or went to school in downtown Boston back in the mid 1980s, you probably walked by – and maybe even took a minute to gaze upon – a certain type of graffiti that was ubiquitous, playful and very political in nature.  These stenciled slogans and evocative images were, apparently, posted by some sort of artists collective that called itself “Perpetual Motion.”   

Please tell me that this rings a bell, or that you actually know more about “Perpetual Motion” than I do.  Maybe you know someone who was part of “P.M,.” or maybe you remember an article about Perpetual Motion that I just can’t find on Google.  (I’m thinking The Boston Phoenix!)

 I’d really like to know what their deal was. Or maybe I just made them up.

Why am I obsessing over this?  

Because I recently unearthed a paper I wrote for my “Integrated Studies” class at Suffolk University in early 1985 (yes, I still have a box of stuff like that; have you met me?) which compared the sudden burst of stenciled graffiti in and around Boston’s Downtown Crossing neighborhood to the European avant-garde Dada artists movement from the 1920s.  

Call me pretentious (I was 19 – give me a break), but I was obsessed with the “modern art” textbook – “Shock of the New” – that we used in that freshman year class.  I was very much into Dadaism for a whole semester. And then I moved on to Elvis Costello.

I still have the textbook on my bookshelf 38 years later.  

It was a pretty good research paper, lol.  I got an A — and the professor was totally into it.

Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy this collection of photos I took of “Perpetual Motion’s” Downtown Crossing graffiti in late 1984 and early 1985.  I mean – when was the last time you heard the name “Ray Shamie,” who tried and failed to unseat Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate?

This next image urges the passerby to vote for “Reagan/Duarte” ticket — Duarte being Jose Napoleon Duarte, the CIA-backed president of El Salvador accused on many atrocities.

“GOP” in the image above spells out “Genocidal Opinion Party.”

Maybe this 1985 stencil of a tower of money warning that “Babel Will Fall” was a warning about the Recession to come in 1990? Or maybe it just looked cool.

This particular piece of Perpetual Motion graffiti (above) really resonated with me back in 1985, as most of my friends and I were certain a nuclear holocaust was inevitable — and growing near.

Please let me know if the agit-prop artwork of “Perpetual Motion” rings a bell?

And the next time you’re walking around Boston’s Downtown Crossing, stop and smell the graffiti.