GEOGRAPHIES OF GRAFFITI commodity / art / urban space

Morgan Alger GPHY.882

INTRODUCTION

Graffiti, like capitalism, is a multi-faceted and multi-scalar phenomenon. Despite being an unusual topic in urban geography, I believe that its complex nature will serve to illustrate the realities and contradictions of the city. Graffiti is an interesting topic because it is at once visible and anonymous, local and global, individual and collective.

The purpose of this paper is to use an actual, existing phenomenon in our urban spaces to critically understand the broader context and structure of capitalism. Geography literature over the past three decades has explored the notion of a large shift in the political economy. The transition from a manufacturing, Welfare state to a post-industrial, Post-Fordist regime has profoundly impacted the management, form and lived experience of the city (Soja, 2000). This paper focusses on three aspects of the current landscape of the Post-Fordist city:

the social production of space

commodification of the urban realm the role of planners and policy-makers in the city

Graffiti Graffiti is constantly legislated against and repressed, but the persistence and proliferation of graffiti throughout human history is evidenced by the marks discovered in the caves at Lascaux and the etchings found in the ruins of Pompeii. Graffiti is simply a mark or scratch on a surface of a building, structure, or street; however, it contains many complex implicit and explicit meanings. Graffiti is a global phenomenon, spanning the geography of the globe, while manifesting the specificities of the immediate context and surroundings. Each piece is a product of the interaction between the surface on which graffiti is written and the body of the writer. Graffiti can be the product of seconds, or a layered work that evolves over time. It can be a product of one artist, a conversation of artists or a collaborative work. Graffiti evokes an immediate reaction in the viewer, but its meaning can change over time. Thus, graffiti produces both space and time.

This paper is organized into three main parts:

First, I will present an illustrated typology of graffiti in Section 1.

Second, in Section 2 I will explore graffiti through the notions presented in the works of Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja and David Harvey, who have made significant contributions to the literature on the social production of space.

Lefebvre reminds social scientists that the larger political economy can be understood through a study of space, but warns that there is no system to studying space. Thus, Section 3 will illustrate the theories presented in Section 2 with three case study examples of cities around the world. The first two case studies illustrate situations where graffiti has come to be seen as a positive force. The third and final case study examines Kingston, Ontario and questions the current response to graffiti by planners. This case study asks two questions:

How can the literature on political economy help us to understand the current legal status of graffiti in Kingston? How can graffiti be seen in a positive light?

Limitations Unfortunately, this paper does not have the space or scope to address the racial, gender or aesthetic aspects of graffiti, nor address the sociological aspects of graffiti sub-cultures. This paper is limited to the discussion of graffiti, the laws and regulations imposed on it, and the social reproduction of space in the Post-Fordist city.

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.1.

MARKS + SCRATCHES

City by-laws provide an insight into how graffiti is conceived in most Canadian cities. By-laws are the most important tools that cities have in

dictating the use of land and regulate behaviour. The City of Torontos defines graffiti as:

Graffiti: "One or more letters, symbols, figures, etching, scratches, inscriptions, stains, or other markings that disfigure or deface a structure or thing, howsoever made or otherwise affixed on the structure or thing, but, for greater certainty, does not include an art mural."

and murals as:

Art mural: A mural for a designated surface and location that has been deliberately implemented for the purpose of beautifying the specific location. City of Toronto Municipal Code 485

This section explores the different forms that graffiti takes in the city. The purpose of this inventory is to unpack the complexity of graffiti ignored by the oversimplified definition of graffiti ubiquitous in urban planning today.

An Inventory of Graffiti

scratches: Messages scratched or etched into surfaces are low-tech types of graffiti.

stickers: Stickers are printed or hand-drawn on adhesive paper and attached to surfaces.

stencil: With stencil graffiti, templates are made in advance, sometimes using computer technology to create the images. Stencils can be used multiple times to reproduce an image. Banksy is a famous stencil graffiti artist.

pieces (masterpieces): Pieces are the most elaborate and colourful works that require time and careful execution.

throw ups: Throw ups are simpler than pieces and more complex than tags, usually only involving two colours and simple graphics.

tags: Tags are stylized versions of the artists name.

characters: Some graffiti, especially street style or hip hop style graffiti, incorporates characters.

paste-ups: Paste-ups are created on paper and then glued to exterior surfaces. They are quick to place, but are susceptible to rain and other elements.

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.2.

THE GRAFFITI PROBLEM

The widely held conception that graffiti is uniquely a problem or a destructive force of vandalism ignores the complex socio-spatial nature of graffiti. This section attempts to unpack the contested status of graffiti using spatial Marxist theory as the basis for analysis, especially Lefebvres work on space (1991), as well as the work of Soja (2000, 1989, 1980) and Harvey (1989, 1973), who drew heavily from the writings of Lefebvre. These thinkers have contributed to the literature with the argument that space is actively and organically produced rather than something static, symbolic or abstract.

According to Lefebvre in Production of Space, space has a highly political character and is the location of the conflicts and contradictions of capitalism. Spatial structure cannot be separated from the relations of class,

labour and production. As opposed to Cartesian philosophy, Lefebvres work is concerned with the interplay between mental, physical and social space. Space, thus, has a dialectical nature where everyday practices in space, conceptions of space and perceptions of space interpenetrate one another (1991: 87). Sojas socio-spatial dialectic emphasizes the importance of history, lived experience and social relationships in the study of space. Moreover, Lefebvre explains that time and space cannot be separated. Time is produced in the rhythms, repetitions and cycles of everyday life, which are produced throughout space.

Different Strokes
Not only has capitalism laid hold of pre-existing space, of the Earth, but it also tends to produce a space of its own. (Lefebvre, 1991: 326)

Central to Lefebvres work is the idea that each mode of production creates its own spaces. Just as there are particular landscapes associated with the industrial city, Lefebvre argues that the Post-Fordist city is characterized by both homogenous and differentiated spaces. By this, Lefebvre means that

capitalism divides capital, for example, land into parcels, and that this results in a fragmented environment. Yet, capital acts as a whole in the abstract space of the market, and therefore is not heterogeneous. The post-industrial city can be conceived of as a homogenous unit of fragmented spaces, or as Lefebvre says,

The space that homogenizes thus has nothing homogenous about it (1991: 308).

Lefebvre continues by declaring that the survival of advanced capitalism has depended upon the differentiation and production of space.

Mass suburbanization, the rise of car-dependant city organization and the culture of consumption have led to new built environments, which Borden as describes as the space of zero degree architecture (2001: 189). Architecturally, the city is being reduced to expansive and meaningless places resulting in monotony. Graffiti writers, like the skateboarders that Borden describes, can therefore be seen as countering the routinised phenomena of privatized urban space by producing different space.

Spaces of differentiation are, according to Lefebvre, the counter-spaces and true spaces of the city where ideas and imaginations are liberated and emancipation begins. Lefebvres underlying argument is that life changes space, and thus change in space can result in changing life. In differential space, difference is accentuated and celebrated and new spaces are formed.

Using Lefebvres spatial Marxist critique of capitalism, it is possible to conceive of graffiti as a resistance to the homogenous and privatised landscape of the city. Graffiti exerts effort on public and private property to produce a work, but asks for no payment in return. An interview with an Australian graffiti artist shows that graffiti artists consider their work to improve the look of the city:

Thinking its gonna look alright when its done . . . I . . . try to . . . make it look exciting instead of boring[like] just looking at a wall (Halsey & Young, 2006: 288).

Graffiti also provides alternative symbols and meanings in a sea of advertising, where visual space in cities are increasingly given over to ad

space. Graffiti is indifferent to price and regulation, and provides a visual critique to the underlying logic of profit, exchange, efficiency, control, normalcy, predictability, regulated space and time (Borden, 2001: 231) of the city.

Bonne Fte Lefebvre makes the counterintuitive statement that leisure has productive potential. He argues that leisure spaces escape the imposed order and control of abstract space and thus become spaces of resistance. They embody a break between formalized spaces of routinised life and the potential of spaces for enjoyment. Graffiti, therefore, has the potential to reminds us of the diversity of uses that the city can have. Lefebvre likens the social production of space to the social production of labour:

Space is divided up into designated (signified, specialized) areas and into areas that are prohibited (to one group or another). It is further subdivided into spaces for work and spaces for leisure, and into daytime and night-time space (Lefebvre, 1991: 383).

Graffiti attacks these separations. The act of creating graffiti, usually a night time activity, reverses the rhythms of everyday life by using urban spaces outside of the 9-5 programmed routines of conventional labour. As opposed to the short-term and long-term thinking of capital, graffiti varies: tagging is the work of seconds, while pieces, stencils, or pasteups require days, weeks or months to produce. Graffiti is unpredictable and ephemeral because it is susceptible to being written over, manipulated or buffed (cleaned up).

Individual pieces can be fun, spontaneous, surprising, humorous, unexpected, ironic, or even cute. Graffiti can express messages of love and evoke emotional or visceral responses. Even when the message is not explicitly political, graffiti is sending a political message of confrontation against the rationality of capitalism.

The artist does not produce commodity, but desire in the writer. One graffiti artist described the sensation:

Feels, like, good like, cos just doing it like slow motion, it relaxes you (Halsey & Young, 2006: 286).

But, graffiti can also be understood not only as an act or display of one artist or writer, but as an object for public consumption. Everyone can experience graffiti from the public realm. As opposed to a museum, graffiti does not charge an entrance fee or come with the political and aesthetic limitations of showing in a commercial art gallery.

Consumptive Cities Graffiti challenges the processes of exchange and consumption in the modern city, and reasserts the importance of use values over exchange values. As the city becomes more organized for the consumption of goods, use values are increasingly denied (Borden, 2001: 239). Increasingly, urban space is no longer just the location of commodity exchange, but urban space itself is becoming a commodity. Buildings and spaces become opportunities for purchase and exchange.

On the other hand, graffiti appropriates the surfaces of the capitalist city and turns them into canvases. It uses exterior walls and fences for the act of producing a creative work. For the graffiti writer, the otherwise unproductive urban space has a use, a place for expressive and creative work, and so space is adopted not as a commodity, but as the common property of social experience (Borden, 2001). Graffiti usually appears in alleys, on garages or abandoned buildings: the left-over spaces of the modern city. Thus, graffiti appropriates new, and otherwise unproductive spaces for diversion and creativity.

Counter/Action
(Social) space is a (social) product [...] the space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action [...] in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power. (Lefebvre, 1991: 26)

Like dirt, graffiti is considered matter out of place. While art belongs in certain places, like galleries, advertising or murals, graffiti is art that has stepped outside of the realm reserved for it.

Gramsci used hegemony to refer to the total social authority that the dominant class exerts over the subordinate classes (Clarke et al, 1975). Space is fundamentally tied to the ideas of power, legitimacy and domination (Harvey, 1989). Planners and architects, as those who conceptualize and imagine space, define order and coherence that dictates how space is lived. These definitions are not objective, but part of strategy, ideology, need and desires.

Urban planning tool of the state, serving the dominant classes by organizing and reorganizing urban space for the benefit of capital accumulation and crisis management (Soja, 1989: 95)

Graffiti exists as a resistance to the silent and ubiquitous hegemonic forces of the city. As opposed to the master plans of urban planners and architects, graffiti appropriates the micro-spaces of the city. It is a force from below, that confronts planners and policy makers as the controllers of urban space.

Hegemony is also the power to control conflict (Clarke et al., 1975). The common response to graffiti by municipalities compels property owners

remove graffiti. Graffiti removal has become a billion-dollar industry in Canada (Grubbe, 2005/6). The state thus converts the anti-commodity into a commodity, and a system is produced where the overaccumulation of capital is absorbed through investments in space (Harvey, 1989).

Summary In this section, I have argued that graffiti can be understood using the work of Lefebvre, Soja and Harvey on the social production of space. Graffiti illustrates the changing nature of the city, such as the commodification of urban space, the increasing dominance of exchange values, and the exercise of hegemonic forces. However, Lefebvres work is optimistic, showing that there is potential for change in the production of leisure spaces and appropriating space for change. The following section applies these contradictions and complexities to the lived world of experience.

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.3.

AROUND THE WORLD

Case Study 1: Bristol, UK Banksy is probably the most famous graffiti artist in the world. Although he was born in Bristol, UK, Banksys work exists on walls around the world. He uses stencil graffiti, stickers, writing and sometimes mixed media to create images that are shocking, political, whimsical or playful. He works with the textures and the context of the surfaces on which he writes.

Controversy arose in 2006 when Bristol came into the awkward situation where city bylaws confronted the interests of capital. Due to Banksys international success, Banksys works have become valuable commodities at auction houses and on the real estate market. Instead of graffiti being associated with urban decay and decreasing property values, Banksys work now has the opposite effect. According to the BBC:

In July one of Banksy's famous early pieces, Gorilla in a Pink Mask, in Eastville, Bristol, was mistaken for "worthless" graffiti and painted over (BBC News, 22 Aug 2010).

This spurred concern over the status of Banksys other works, prompting proposals that Branksys work be listed as a cultural heritage resource due to its cultural and financial value (BBC News). Heritage designation would protect selected works from the local bylaws that call for the eradication of graffiti. But, this strategy is also linked to the gentrification thesis and how designation has the potential to manipulate property values in the interests of dominant classes and for the expropriation of the working classes (Smith, 1996). As Soja states,

The urban public realm never acts as a free agent , but always within the economic and political field shaped by market competition and profitmaximizing behaviour (2000: 107).

Interestingly, other graffiti artists have opposed Banksys work and its contribution to the gentrification of once working class areas of Bristol. In some cases, his work has been vandalised as a protest against gentrification (www.artinfo.com). In this case local business owners and the community came together to restore the wall to its original form. The Bristol case can be

understood as a problem arising from the tension between the global scale and the local scale.

Case Study 2: Melbourne, Australia Melbourne is a city internationally renown for its graffiti alleys. These colourful spaces have become the subject of photography, travel journals and websites.

The Melbourne Graffiti Strategy (Young, 2005) is a radically different approach to the management of graffiti in urban spaces. The Strategy is based on several assumptions: first, that graffiti can improve the quality of the urban environment, second, that tagging is detrimental and an act of vandalism, and third, that fostering a culture of graffiti writers is important to improving the quality of graffiti and beautifying the city.

The City of Melbourne has identified areas where graffiti is tolerated, in these zones, property owners can choose whether or not to remove the graffiti. Graffiti is funnelled to certain neighbourhoods and alleys where

graffiti is being identified by the city as being community assets. Other areas, such as high-pedestrian zones in the CBD, are deemed no-tolerance and in these places graffiti removal kits are provided to property owners. The goal of this strategy is not to eliminate graffiti, but selectively promote it. Also, the Strategy takes the financial burden of removing graffiti off of property owners.

Graffiti, in this strategy, is seen as both a positive force economically, as a draw for visitors and as a positive community amenity. The strategy encourages the establishment of hoardings and walls that provide room for experimentation. These hoardings can then easily be removed or replaced if desired.

However, Dovey et al. (2012) suggest that any formal acceptance of graffiti by government would have a destructive effect on the creative force of graffiti. In one Melbourne alley, a property owner mounted a Plexiglas shield over a Banksy work to protect it; however, later paint was poured behind the Plexiglas in defiance of the act of protecting graffiti. As suggested by Dovey

et al., the maintenance of graffiti as an illegal, temporary, and uncontrollable activity is necessary to the survival of the practice.

Nothing will kill graffiti more effectively than promotion and preservation. Graffiti cannot be fully defined or preserved without becoming purified and killed; a quality it shares with urban character and place identity (Dovey et al., 2012: 40).

Melbournes graffiti is being appropriate more and more by advertising. Ads camouflaged as graffiti target young consumers. While this may provide graffiti artists with pay for their labour, it throws into question the emancipatory properties of graffiti. As Fyfe states,

In practice, even when we let difference into the public spaces of the city its relation tends to be a tactical one an action that plays on and within a power organized by another (Fyfe, 2004: 29).

Case Study 3: Kingston, Ontario, Canada The Bristol and Melbourne examples demonstrate remarkably different strategies to graffiti on behalf of city officials and planners, who have embraced graffiti. In Bristol, one artists graffiti became a tool for gentrification, and so methods are being put in place to protect Banksys work. In Melbourne, the tourist industry has prompted a municipal strategy

focussed on creating a sustainable culture of graffiti writers to improve the quality of urban space.

Kingston, Ontario is the third case study for this paper. Kingston is not known for being a graffiti city, yet it provides an example of the most common situation facing Canadian municipalities.

Kingston takes a zero-tolerance approach to graffiti, based on the broken windows thesis that forwards the idea that small offences like graffiti can contribute to a rise in more serious crime (Fyfe, 2004). City by-laws call for the complete eradication of graffiti from city streets:

Written slogans and graffiti on the exterior of any building, wall, fence or structure shall be prohibited, including painted or chalked titles or messages. (By-law No. 2005-100)

This quote from Mayor Mark Garretson reflects Kingstons official attitude toward graffiti:

Graffiti is a problem in many municipalities and unfortunately Kingston is no different from the rest. (City of Kingston, press release Sept 26, 2011)

In the City of Kingstons current graffiti strategy, low-security inmates are released on a work program to identify, inventory and remove graffiti from Kingstons public buildings. Inmates provide a cost-effective graffiti solution for the City. Eradication suits the interests of the downtown economic organizations, who conflate graffiti with,

a sense of disorder and neglect towards the overall state of the community (Grubbe, 2005/6: 5).

The City can fine property owners who fail to remove graffiti. Several graffiti removal companies can be contracted to remove graffiti from private buildings. Despite these efforts, graffiti has hardly been banished from the streets of Kingston. Graffiti seems to flourish in the back alleys and carriageways of downtown, and tagging and stickers can be found on the signs and storefronts of Princess Street. Graffiti Alley, located behind the Grand Theatre, is a popular hang out spot for teens as well as becoming a part of Kingstons cultural landscape.

This space was not an overnight project: the beauty of Graffiti Alley is the evolution of the chaotic and layered walls that are the product of many artists over many years. Graffiti Alley is illegal according to the Citys by-laws, but the tolerance of this place by officials and property owners has created a colourful space in the heart of Kingston.

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.4.

CONCLUSION

This paper has attempted to show the complexity of graffiti by drawing from theory and the real experiences of contemporary cities. This paper does not take the approach that there is one solution to graffiti or that all graffiti is the same. Graffiti is a global phenomenon, but one that is locally produced and consumed.

While graffiti can be a resistance against the consumption landscape of the post-industrial city by turning underused spaces into a non-commodified

product for public consumption, city planning and municipal by-laws tend to take the form that best suits the interests of capital, whether it be selective tolerance or zero-tolerance of graffiti.

Recent examples have seen a turn to a more tolerant approach to graffiti by city planning, although, through the study of Lefebvre, Harvey and Soja, this turn can be understood as a manifestation of changing power differentials and how the global market for tourism and creative places are transforming graffiti into a commodity.

However, as Lefebvre argues, differential spaces are present in every spatial organization and the turn to a more tolerant approach to graffiti does leave room for the emergence of community and youth engagement projects in the city and the production of unique and quality spaces in the city. While unique responses are required for unique situations, planners are recognizing the need for mess and complexity in the city.