Are Graffitists Merely Claiming Their “Right to the City”?
The first thing we did after we signed the lease on that small stretch of street, largely shaded by a big corporate building (potent symbol of current power) and a large Catholic church (architectural artifact of the powers that once were) was to paint the outside of “our” building, or rather the outside frontage of the unit that we leased. We’d decided on white, covering part of a mural that had been painted over the entire building. That’s right, we painted over a mural—something most graffiti practitioners would never do. We broke the unwritten rule that anti-graffiti folks have been relying on!
The pure white was to frame our vision—a silent discourse on the purity of the sourcing, preparation and thinking that went into our food.
By consciously painting the walls to send a message, were we engaging in an act of graffiti?
At first, our patrons couldn’t find us because we had posted no signage, no logo. Influenced by Naomi Klein’s tome No Logo and an ideal of a village community—we believed that we didn’t need signage. The lack of logo was a symbol of pride, or community. In effect, by creating negative space where other businesses would put their name, we were making a statement. The message was: “if we are doing our job right, you will hear about us and you will find us”.
By consciously evading the conventional approach to business signage in order to send a message, were we engaging in an act of graffiti?
Any time that we establish some type of ownership of a territory—or visually claim it as our own, we are committing an act motivated by the same reasoning that creates graffiti.
And we had to defend the territory too! Situated only a few steps from a local nightclub, we often returned the day after a particularly rowdy night to find a variety of “things” splashed on our front steps and walls. The days always began with our own purification rites: our “holy water” was bleach and boiling water; splashed over all and thoroughly scrubbed. Sometimes, after all had been cleaned and disinfected, we would encourage our children to decorate the sidewalk with their drawings in chalk.
By cleaning the usual grime and grit and revealing the purist white, were we engaging in an act of graffiti?
Working in London, a renowned graffiti artist who goes by the name of “Moose” creates urban guerilla art by scrubbing sections of grime away –doing a semi- permanent graffiti by creating reverse images of cleanliness. And by encouraging our children to use drawings to bring their world of innocence to that treeless wind corridor we were definitely motivated by the same reasons as most graffiti-creators today; we wanted to change the very spirit and feeling of the space; as Smith, 2007 paraphrasing the popular counter culture magazine, Adbusters expresses it: “…public art says the human spirit is alive here” . It may have been that the only thing that distinguished our efforts from those of graffiti-ists was that our materials lacked permanence. The chalk drawings always washed away in the rain.
When the graffiti practitioners tagged our purist white cube, we were able to confound them by reasserting our right to the territory with more pure white paint, almost immediately.
Was this repainting an act of graffiti?
Graffiti-ists are known for tagging others’ work and for re-asserting their own: a symbolic control of territory. So, by this definition, we were the ultimate in graffiti-ists because we didn’t just tag their work, we erased every record of it.
Well, our efforts to claim and maintain control over the visual territory were finished when one day we came to open the shop and found “Enter” scratched –etched into our glass. Impossible to cover up and too expensive to change the glass—we would just have to suffer with “Enter’s” brand all over ours like a canine’s urine.
He’d won. We made inquiries and finally found out who this “artist” was, leaving me to scowl at all young men with a limp and a briefcase. Apparently, years before, “Enter” had been doing graffiti on the train tracks when he’d been hit and gotten permanently disfigured..
So, what is it that distinguished our territorial control of the area from that of Enter’s? Was it merely permanence? We asserted temporary control through the creation of negative space—cleanliness in a grimy, dark street. If our act was “guerilla” in any way, it was in much the same way that a well tended guerilla garden has the same underlying premises as what I’d call “higher thought” graffiti: a challenge to depersonalization, automobile and consumer culture; an exercise of power and “freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves” which, according to Urban Geographer David Harvey is “one of the most precious but most neglected of the human rights” (Harvey, 2008).
But, we are unusual: a business that has no signage, no brand posted in the public environment to claim symbolic control of territory. What about businesses that do post signage?
Is This Graffiti?
By most standards, (including mine) this would not be considered graffiti, rather the legitimate posting of business’ wares: attractive and engaging—an important part of a vibrant streetscape. Many would identify this photo as a sign of a healthy economy and a balanced urban community. However, to some graffiti practitioners, urban advertising is the real culprit:
The people who deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface, but you’re never allowed to answer back. Well, they started the fight and the wall is the weapon of choice to hit them back (Banksy, 2007: introduction).
It is unlikely that Banksy was referring to a small, one way sidestreet in a Pacific Northwest city which features an economy of agglomeration of funky, independently owned boutiques such as the one featured in this photo. His comments were likely directed to an area more like any major urban centre’s core, Regardless, in this quote, Banksy is making it clear that he perceives the graffiti practitioner as a worthy opponent in an ongoing war for the hearts and minds of those who inhabit urban spaces. This approach to graffiti implies a relativity of equality—of equal power relations between the graffiti-ist and the corporate sphere. He is clear about his explanation of why graffiti is considered an illegitimate form of expression to most of us:
The people who run our cities don’t understand graffiti because they think that nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit (Banksy, 2007).
Aha! So it is profit-making which establishes legitimacy, eh? Well, perhaps that explains why I can now buy those whimsical Banksy prints at my local bookstore!
But seriously, let’s examine the role of profit as a legitimizing device. According to Farthing (2010; 69) “…graffiti had been well established as a counter culture force by the time TAKI 183 as featured in the New York Times ad the graffiti “craze” had taken hold of the city. In 1977, Basquiat began his SAMO (Same Old Shit) project, spraypainting graffiti on the walls of buildings of Manhattan”. It wasn’t long before Basquiat and the other graffiti artists of the era were “discovered” by a jaded art scene, hungry to consume real pain and real angst. Art dealers turned to the streets to get their fix of authentic, urban culture. This was at a time when the US/art scene required a uniquely-American visual-cultural statement.
Another celebrated artist of the time, Andy Warhol, created works that enshrined the American prosperity based on the success of the values of mass consumption and mass production. And, while there is still debate about whether Warhol did his works with tongue in cheek, cheekily poking fun at the foolish Americans, or whether he did his work with greater seriousness—there can be no doubt that art collectors and galleries were snapping up and devouring his narcissistic Americana works. The time was ripe to celebrate and consume urban American culture. And so, art collectors and investors turned their attention to the angst filled, colourful art of the ghetto. And nobody expressed that more understandably and vehemently than Basquiat.
Any revolutionary will tell you that one of the most effective ways to disarm counter cultural activities is to co-opt them. And so it was with the urban graffiti scene. Initially, Basquiat’s work was to be found on the urban back streets of Manhattan. In this context, his SAMO discourse challenged people to engage with his esoteric, quixotic statements. His scrawls were designed to make people re-think their assumptions. But, with the art scene hungry for an authentic urban ghetto art, it wasn’t long before Basquiat:
…stopped tagging buildings, preferring the context of galleries or even vernissages and drawing media attention to himself…his rise to prominence was without parallel. The graffiti sprayer who left mysterious and witty statements on the walls of SoHo and East Village became a celebrated star, holding court in the explosive art scenes of Zurich, New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles. He was courted by an art market that saw prices shoot up to previously unimaginable heights as it’s mechanisms followed increasingly cutthroat and increasingly economic laws…the way the art market used him and the other “kids” shows what he shared in common with other graffiti artists. These kids, like Basquiat, moved from spraying subway cars to the canvases of the galleries, from being ignored to being shuttled from opening to opening, only to be unceremoniously dropped as soon as interest died (Emmerling,, 2011: 7).
How is it that the same creative expression can be labeled “art’ in one context and generate massive profits and be labeled “deviance’ in another context?
Properly marketed, these could be shown as installations
in top galleries and labelled fine art.
Instead of trying to determine if we are looking at graffiti (read bad, illicit, degenerate) or street art (read possibly bad, possibly good, depending on sale-ability within the art world), this article will explore the discourses employed within and through the labels of “art” and “graffiti”. In this way, we will be able to see, visually, the dynamic relationships between power (that which legitimizes and names), identity, and knowledge creation. In this way, we will generate a capacity to re-conceive the landscape around us as an ongoing expression of a variety of narratives.
When we had our business located on a downtown street, our only concern was that we send a clear and congruent message to our patrons. We were consciously directing and changing the environment in order to send that message. However, our attempts to create a clean, fresh environment may have been read by some as an attempt at creating a sterile, artificial environment!
From this perspective, the graffiti marks on our Le Courbousier-esque purist white cube, could be read as an attempt to humanize the area, to create an updated, current “folk art”. From this perspective, the marks made on the walls of the building where we were leasing could be read as a challenge to our commerce-based, sanitized world. The graffiti marks were supposed to be jarring! They were a challenge to what Harvey refers to as “…hegemonic liberal and neoliberal market logics, or the dominant modes of legality and state action” (Harvey, 2008; introduction). Perspective: we saw ourselves as a little family business, struggling to bring culture and community—the graffitist probably saw us as “business” another proponent of the neoliberal ethic which was eroding his sense of identity and belonging!
A carefully constructed collage encourages us to whimsy – in stark contrast to the cold metal which frames it.
For some, creating guerilla graffiti is a way to create a direct and visceral interaction with a landscape which otherwise feels soulless and alienating. By placing their hands and their creations into the urban landscape the are saying “I am now an active participant in how it operates and a partial creator of it’s complex language…For a moment, I am taken out of my known world and presented with an alternative one which is unexpected and daring” (Keri, 2007;9). In this way, graffitists share similar aspirations to all artists who attempt to add a new image to the world, or to provide an alternative viewpoint (Keri, 2007:10).
So, why was it okay for us to control and dominate the landscape surrounding the space we were leasing through erasure and exclusion of image, yet an active attempt at making marks is equated with crimes against property, vandalism? Keri asserts that the question which is provoked here is “how do we define the boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour, what is “allowed?”
It may be that the answer lies in our culturally embedded model of power. Based on a liberal, juridical concept of power rooted in the eighteenth century. This model of power assumes that power can be taken to be a right, that it can be possessed and that it can be transferred among and between parties like a commodity (Dreyfuss and Rabinow, 1983: 200).
By this conception of power, what we were doing through erasure was legitimate and productive because it was improving property values on land that was in our care and keeping for the duration of the lease. The art in galleries was legitimate by this model because it was generating revenue for the economy overall and for the gallery owner specifically, as well as legitimizing and increasing property values (as any study of relationship between property values, gentrification and the role of art galleries can confirm).
Consequently, it seems that access to the visual landscape is legitimized or de-legitimized/criminalized on the basis of the proximity or relationship to the landowner and the likelihood that the activity will lead to increased property values—a notion that would seem to silence and erase voices that were not in perfect harmony with a mass consumption/mass production capitalist status quo. This is confirmed by Harvey (2008) who explains that land ownership by the middle classes itself changed post WW II “from community towards the defense of property values and individualized identities”. This yields understanding of the quick way of distinguishing art from graffiti that I heard the other day: “whether the artist has received permission from the owner”.
The juxtaposition of these images—innocence, capitalism and armaments contrasted with a first nations woman becomes poignant when we contemplate that we are all on land that was claimed and transferred “legitimately” through the juridico-discursive model of power, a philosophical model that the first nations peoples did not share.
So, there it is: graffiti-ists think that they are asserting their right to participate in the co-creation of their landscape and are under siege from others who would prefer to avoid their participation, or relegate it to private spaces. Trying to get their creations approved by landowners is time consuming and counter to the guerilla nature of grafitti. Relegating their art to hang on walls in their own homes, graffiti artists will not be able to get an audience, stimulate large scale change or interaction with their ideas—and galleries often reject them, unless a profit can be made—leaving them with the street; which may just suit them fine:
…to relegate art to a gallery makes it available only to certain people, usually those with money [read access to privilege and power]. Guerilla art is for everyone. It engages viewers who might never set foot in a gallery. It is free and accessible…[graffiti] is one of the more honest forms [of art] available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the price of admission (Gastman & Neeton, 2010: 45).
These graffiti practitioners see themselves as embedded in and contributing to a vibrant, fully engaged community. And I’d planned to finish my article/exploration/visual essay on this note.
However, shortly after completing my first draft, a flyer was delivered to my mailbox: with a bold capitalized PLEASE READ, I was commanded to give my attention to three pages of dense text:
There are many residents [my emphasis] who believe that “artwork” on [hydro] poles makes our [my emphasis] neighborhood less attractive and provides tacit approval for graffiti to be extended to other poles, sidewalks, fences, fire hydrants and personal and business property….you may have noticed that artwork on poles and personal property eventually is tagged by graffiti and there is a long delay in it being repaired if ever…Research clearly indicates that the best way to manage graffiti is to remove it immediately…”
Here, key issues of representation and identity become obfuscated. Who are the neighbourhood dwellers? Who are the “residents”? Which ones have elucidated this belief? How have they made their ideas know? Who are the stakeholders here? They could be narrowly defined as people who own property which is directly impacted, or organized non-profit groups who stand to receive funding…but I can tell you clearly that as a resident of this neighborhood, nobody ever came to ask me! This is all about identity and representation. Traditionally, categorizations of and assumptions of “public” or “community” imply that there is a unified consensus. Establishing the perception of a unity of identity is an extremely important in a democracy because it is easy to refute any citizen’s access to the narrative by claiming that the citizen is not “representative of the community”. Like the juridico-discursive model of power that only assumes two obvious forces: powerholders and powerless, this approach assumes only two identities: community member or outsider. It neglects to recognize that identity is more subtle and changing that this model acknowledges:
The meanings of and membership within the categories of discursive practice will be constant sites of struggle over power, as identity is posited, resisted and fought over…identity is never regarded as being given by nature…membership in a category, as a particular type of subject is regarded as the effect of devices of categorization; thus identity is seen as contingent, provisional, achieved, not given (emphasis in original) (Clegg, 1989: 15).
In addition, by claiming that graffiti, if left unchecked, will spread to other property and by using the term “repaired” to indicate erasure of graffiti, the authors of this flyer are showing that they see no value in graffiti whatsoever. There is only one answer to graffiti: deny and repress it. If you accept the earlier premise that graffiti-ists are simply engaged members of the community, attempting to express their voice, to interact with their urban environment in a way that is meaningful to them; if you also recognize that some graffiti artists view themselves as engaged combatants in a war against depersonalization, mass-consumption and post-industrial economy, then you will agree that attempts at erasure will only lead to a further decline in the quality of the community overall.
The language in the next few pages of the invective against graffiti is clearly in denial of the rights of people to express themselves visually in public spaces, unless legitimized by an organized, collective project:
Graffiti tags are not art; they are a form of vandalism which degrades the appearance of our community [my emphasis]. The deterioration and lack of respect for the public and private property tends to promote an increase in graffiti, vandalism and disrespectful behaviour in general [my emphasis]. Where it is perceived that no one cares about a neighbourhood, then people will tend to behave accordingly. The result is a lowered quality of life, more crime and even decreased property values [my emphasis].
My study of language and discourse has taught me to be wary of sentence constructions which employ vague or impersonal pronouns to avoid clarity about who is doing what to whom. In the above paragraph, there is no indication of who will have a lowered quality of life—the assumption is that there is a “community” of good neighbours who are under threat by outsiders or “the other” who are invading and spreading graffiti, vandalism and general disrespect like a virus. Here we find a variation of an old theme which has been invoked for centuries to give “good people” the permission to feel virtuous or righteous while they selfishly consider themselves as the only valid members of a rigidly defined community (Rosenberg, 2005; Wink,1998) .
Reading further, I see that these alarmist statements are legitimized by an academic sounding study titled “Graffiti Doubles Incidence of Petty Crime” in which three authors had published “findings” online:
Commencing with the question “Does a messy neighborhood make a difference on how people act?” and concluding the question with the answer “It sure does!”, this “research” goes on to acknowledge that graffiti was not directly or causally related to predatory crime, but this doesn’t stop the authors from asserting that graffiti does lead to “behavior decline”, defined as “ignoring the rules of good behavior”. This behaviour decline is then defined as “ignoring no admittance signs”. Really? So ignoring “no admittance” signs is an indication of deviance. We really are living in the Brave New World! What kind of obedience is being sought here? And why is a freedom of movement equated with behavioural decline. Where was this “no admittance” sign? There is absolutely no context provided for this very qualitative study and that is a point of concern (to say the least!). And while we’re at it, this was one isolated study—and the authors do not indicate whether there were any other potential variables at work, other than graffiti. Furthermore, they do not indicate what type of graffiti we are talking about here. As the photographs and discussions in this essay show, there are many types of and motivations
Totally aside from the epistemological issues of this “research”. from the perspective of the researchers, it appears that the sanitized, depersonalized urban landscape is intended to be stripped of human markings. The stuff that surrounds us is designed to ensure that we do not act in unexpected ways—ways which could disrupt the smooth functioning of an economy based on mass production/mass consumption (to the detriment of many other values, such as craft, art and the authentic connections between community members).
According to Ivan Illich in his book Tools For Conviviality, we must examine our current systems of production and consumption, to be always vigilant for indications that our modes of interaction that are mediated by the corporate and governmental structures (which we ourselves have constructed with loving and diligent hands) have not become grotesque versions of themselves, inhibiting the very ideals which they were supposed to protect and facilitate. We must ensure that they do not create:
…a hostile mileu which extinguishes the free use of natural abilities of society’s members, isolating them from one another and locking them into a man made shell which undermines the very foundations of community by promoting social polarization (Illich, 1973:xi).
Graffiti free zones: the new gated communities?
So, rather than simply deviant, graffiti can be seen as an upsurge of individualism in an ever more standardized urban environment. The discourses which frame graffiti as vandalism can be seen as the legitimizing discourses of those who are caught inextricably within an ever-tightening web of standardization, automation, mass production and mass consumption which reduces the members of a community’s authentic voice to an act of consumption or to an institutionally organized and validated act.
How is this done? By attempting to erase the graffiti and replace it with corporate or institutionally sponsored paint or murals, we are acting like a collective psyche which attempts to battle it’s shadow by further repression. In classic style, those who transgress established social norms are labeled and judged. The members of the community become more polarized. The “other” is created and subjected to punitive justice of their illegal acts:
There are many sides of ourselves that we deny. We are frightened or repulsed by them and do not want to admit them into awareness. For ensuring our survival, we develop protective structures against the power of those denied sides. We bury that power in the darkness, called the unconscious and there we try to keep it safely out of sight. Our culture, too, tells us what is to be ignored, what is not to be done and what s wrong. We dutifully store those forbidden areas in the darkness as well. A time comes in our development when we need to take back what we and our culture have put in the darkness because some of what we have buried there is essential for our next steps (Bates, 1991: 5)
If we continue to repress, erase, and deny the messages sent to us from the shadow sides of ourselves and to punish the messengers, we will be left more vulnerable and ill-equipped to handle our own development. Likewise, if we as a society, as a community, continue to repress, erase, deny and project our own fears onto the messages sent to us by other members of our community (graffiti-ists) we will remain more vulnerable at a time of increasing conflict and change. Even as we congratulate ourselves for waging a successful war on graffiti, our rigid belief structures will become the source of our undoing.
This conscious denial, at times essential for our collective preservation leaves much of what is feared unheard and unseen to develop in the darkness of the unconscious mind. All that culture considers good, it relegates to the light of awareness and all that it considers bad, it ignores and relegates to the darkness of ignorance. Both are endorsed in the name of the protective community. The womb of darkness holding our forgotten pasts—along with our unknown futures is then maligned by culture and the ego because our despised selves and our evils are buried there. Culture and ego both blame the darkness for what they hide in it (Bates, 1991:14/15)
So, how to end this little exploration of graffiti? Can I end it with some neat little recommendation? Perhaps a proposal for another organization or further study to be funded? At the very least, I could provide a prescriptive, normative conclusion: an “appeal to an objective theory of human nature in order to say what set of social arrangements can produce well-being and what sort can produce disorder and distress” (Dreyfuss & Rabinow, 1983). No! That would maintain and reinforce the collective delusion, the ego status, the status quo—attempting to propose solutions, to “fix” a perceived social ill.
Instead, all I can propose is that we be willing to challenge accepted notions of beauty, art and community—realizing that we have been socialized and conditioned to dwell only in the sanctuary of legitimized landscapes. This form of thinking and assumptions, if unchallenged, will continue to replicate itself in a multiplicity of forms.
In addition, I could also propose that if we are willing to explore the messages and narratives embedded in our landscapes, we will find that there is much to learn and that from this knowledge, solutions will emerge on their own. Instead of fearing and erasing graffiti, we could welcome the insights that it could yield.
So, you’re wondering whether I would handle graffiti in the same way now that I’ve thought and considered it for the past four years…
There is a Zen saying: “before enlightenment, hew wood, carry water; after enlightenment, hew wood, carry water”. In the same way, I would likely take the same actions to claim the visual/spiritual territory for my own venture.
However, I would do it in a different spirit. Instead of maligning graffiti-ists, I would hold a greater sense of curiosity as I erased their marks and replaced mine. I might consider doing a non-commercial mural or other more personalized way of claiming the space instead of just creating a white wall, sterile and stripped of personality. Furthermore, the thoughts that I had would lead to larger questions about the values that I hold (cleanliness, integrity, community) and how I could express those values without eroding other values that I hold.
Finally, I would stop the judgments and moralistic invectives that I’d been silently hurtling towards “Enter”. Instead of thinking of him a threat to my business and livelihood, I would begin to wonder what drove him to such distraction that he could get permanently maimed just in order to make his mark. I would have more compassion and I would wonder about the message embedded in his moniker, the person who went to all lengths to carve his message permanently in our urban landscape. I would be acting in a spirit of love and compassion and inclusiveness—and I believe that that is the level where all real change occurs anyway.
This Article By Tal11K
Photo Credits
All photographs are © Susan Jones
Works Cited
Banksy (2007). Wall and Piece. Random House: UK
Bates, Charles (1991). Pigs Eat Wolves: Going Into Partnership With Your Dark Side”. Yes International Publishers. St. Paul, Minnesota.
Buber, Martin (1970). I and Thou. Charles Scribner’s Sons, USA.
Dreyfus & Rabinow (1983). “Power and Truth” in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Emmerling, Leonard (2011). Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Explosive Force of the Streets 1960-1988. Taschen: Los Angeles.
Farthing, Stephen (2010). Art: From Cave Painting to Street Art—40,000 Years of Creativity. Random House: New York.
Gastman, Roger and Caleb Neelon (2010). The History of American Grafitti. Harper Design: New York.
Harvey, David (2008) “Right to the City” in New Left Review 53. September-October.
Illich, Ivan (1973) Tools For Conviviality. Harper & Row, Publishers Inc., USA.
Klein, Naomi (2000). No Logo. Knopf: Canada.
Rosenberg, Marshall B. (2005) Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. Puddledancer Press: USA.
Sawicki, J. (1991). “Foucault and Feminism: Towards a Politics of Difference” in Disciplining Foucault: Feminism, Power and The Body. Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc.
Smith, Keri (2007). The Guerilla Art Kit. Princeton Architectural Press: New York.
Wink, Walter (1998). The Powers That Be: Theology For A New Millenium. Augsburg Fortress: USA.
Graffiti Re/Examined is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN