BACK TO SCHOOL: FIND OUT WHAT “PUNITION” ARE

September arrives in its usual fashion, almost silently, yet a heartbreaker for a lot of people. It may sound like a bit much, but returning to school is a bit traumatic for many. A kind of punishment or act of discipline in radical contrast with the freedom of summer.
And, it’s a kind of punishment we like (no, don’t think kinky; this blog is family-friendly), that we want to discuss today. We are referring to “Punitions”, word of French origin, and which refers to those endless rows of tags that cover subway cars as if they were blackboards from school. A visual punishment for surfaces on wheels.

What are “Punitions”, or punishments?

Even if you don’t know the term, we are sure you have seen what they are all about.
Do you remember the punishment that Principal Skinner imposed on Bart Simpson: a blackboard, chalk and Bart repeating the same sentence over and over again?
This has its counterpart in the graffiti world. “Punition” is the practice of covering a surface with the same tag as if it were a visual punishment. It was popularized in Paris in the mid 90’s thanks to Azyle, a writer who, as we will discover later, paid a high price for his commitment to this type of graffiti.

One of the most recognized characters for his “punitions” in their more artistic version, covering murals and canvases, is the New Yorker based in Paris, Jonone, but he is not the only one who has used them beyond tunnels or trains. L’Atlas, to give another example, has also put them to canvas.

The Origin of “Punishments”

In a mainstream way, they were carried out in schools as a way of teaching and disciplining students; this dates back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Evidently, nowadays, they are in disuse because it has been proven useless.
The origin of Punition in graffiti became popular, as we have already mentioned, in Paris in the 1990s, when Azyle -at that time Ali.06- entered the yard of the Varenne station for the first time. The rest is history, which you can find in the links.

Just a few things about Azyle

If we agree that the tag is the foundation of graffiti, he is probably one of the biggest purists on the scene, to the point of being one of a very small percentage of writers who took it upon themselves to tag cars, alone and insatiably. What do we mean by this? That most writers who go down to the subway paint pieces.
They don’t fill wagons with tags.

This writer’s story is not entirely atypical in the graffiti world: problems with the authorities, social norms and discipline, according to his family. However Azyle demonstrated commitment and discipline when it came to graffiti that debunks that analysis that we can appreciate in this excerpt from the article about him on CLIQUE TV by Karim Boukercha.
Boukercha is also the author of the wonderful book Descente Interdite.

“When it was time to return to school in 1990, and while his parents, exhausted by his school failures, enrolled him in the Lycée de Paris (LAP), Azyle decided to make an impact. He cared little for his studies and the moral contract he had with his family, who thought that in a less strict structure their son, who had so many problems with authority, would take control of his life. They were not entirely wrong, because Azyle found his love for the discipline only in his tag. He took refuge in the subway and organized his days in a military manner.

7am: Wake up to pretend that he is going to school.
8am: Arrive to school.
8:30am: Expedition to look for new yards; find and steal equipment.
From 11:00am to 2:00pm: Tagging session.
From 2:00pm to 6:00pm: Another search for yards, surveillance and theft.
6:30pm: Obligatory return home.
7:30pm: Family dinner.
10:00pm: Preparation of materials for the following day, ink mixing, filling, etc.
From 1:00am to 6:00am: Escape from home two or three times a month to go to a yard by foot or bicycle.”

This compulsion leads him to win the “Grand Slam” -“grand chelem” in French- on the subway lines, and to then focus on his line, number 7. In a very short time, all 80 cars on the line bore his name, both inside and out. Within six months everyone was talking about him.
His career ended with the RATP graffiti squad. After an unprecedented and publicised trial for this, he eventually got a whopping 8 months in jail and 136.000E in damages in 2016.

But there is “Punishment” beyond Azyle

There are other well known writers; Soack156 , Shoe, O’clock, Buni are some of them.
However, and from what little we know about this practice, it seems to be in disuse and close to disappearing altogether. It is not clear to us why it is not more popular. Perhaps the effort and reward involved are disproportionate. Perhaps the legal punishment and the act are so out of balance that it is not worth it. Or maybe doing pieces is simply more attractive.

What is clear to us is that a graffiti writer who is dedicated to his craft has no problems when it comes to discipline or commitment. Challenging authority is another matter, and we don’t deal well with that, perhaps because the only authority we like to recognize is our own.

If you are interested in this topic, check out these links or the book Descente Interdite.

Azyle Pics: Descente Interdite