The Walls Have the Floor - Mural Journal - May '68 translated by Henry Vale, foreword by Tom McDonough afterword by Whitney Phillips edited by Julien Besançon, is just apparently a little book published by MIT Press about 1968. Realistically, the book contained in this apparently innocuous book is incredibly powerful, young. Vital. These messages, phrases have great adherence to our reality as well.
Why 1968 made the difference? Well that one was a movement blessed by ideals, and when young people protest using ideals no one will be in grade to tame that fire. And that protest, maybe it's an "unicum," because the protest interested the entire world.
1968 was a crucial year for the world. In the USA Reverend Martin Luther King and Bob Kennedy, who was running for the Presidential Elections were killed. Five years before Robert Kennedy's brother, President John Fitzgeral Kennedy was also killed in Dallas. World was a confused land. Protests, for the most diversified reasons increased quickly. People wanted answers to their needs, more rights and, implied, less wars.
Fifty years later maybe its better to return to speak of a movement in grade if not to change the world, to create a lot of pressure on the establishment for a better world and more rights.
This book prospects a different, curious, "new" point of view (the book was released in France on 1968) for trying to see more closely how students of Paris protested during that incredible year that was the 1968.
Did students protested in the streets? Of course. In squares and universities? Implied, but...Not only.
Another vehicle, a strong and powerful one considering the big visibility that they can offer, were walls as well. The ones of prestigious universities, the ones where people could capture the most the attention of students. On "their" walls, the ones of the universities were they were studying in, placea for thinkers, places for learning they elaborated new theories for a best world adding also all their protest, their disaffection for the system, trying also in this way to reach as many people as possible.
In the while Julien Besançon, at that time a reporter of Europe no.1 started to notice these graffiti. They were so many! and he thought: why not to create a book reporting what these students, these people, so angry, are saying to politicians? It was a pure success. Why? Because this one is an angry book, a book that wants to let you think about a lot of situations.
The original author did all his best for reporting also the place where he found the messages launched by a unknown graffiti-lovers, written maybe during the night, or in a moment where no one could see him/her.
Some graffitis?
They talk of revolution, they talk of social change. In one of them:
"Watch out: careerists and kiss-asses can disguise themselves with a "sociological" mask."
"Liberty is not a good we possessed. It is a good they've prevented us from having thanks to laws, rules, prejudices, ignorance, etc..."
" A man is not stupid or intelligent: he is free or he isn't."
"Take the trip everyday of your life."
"I came.
I saw.
I believed."
"Don't liberate me I will take care of it."
"The forests precedes man, the desert follows him."
"All Power to the Imagination."
"Talk with your neighbors."
Times are changed and at the moment the new "walls" where to write about the most diversified protests are social medias, seen as the quickest modality for reaching as many people as possible. After all a lot of people in the world are connected to the net.
Comparisons with social media and impact different but similar because a vibrant and correct protest can seriously touch the chords of wagons of people as we have seen also during the past months with new movements like #NeverAgain, #MeToo and the Women's March in Washington.
After 50 years 1968 is continuing to whisper of a land of freedom and more rights.
Highly recommended.
I thank MIT Press for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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