Check out this video posted on Wooster Collective recently; this really complicates my thinking about the work of the “whitespacers”–city workers that cover up street art with (usually) white paint. Throwing Rothko’s work into the mix certainly encourages me to re-examine and rethink what I’ve been looking at (and how I’ve been looking at it) in this city. At the heart of this issue are competing definitions of “art” and “aesthetics” that are played out in public spaces–both the work of street artists and whitespacers count as “art”, but both are different manifestations of different definitions.
A couple great stencils I happened to catch on New Year’s Eve in Toronto:
As a post-graduate student at Florida State University, I teach first-year Composition to incoming undergraduates. Since this is my first year teaching at this university, I am delegated (as are all first-time TA’s) to the basement of Dodd Hall. In this windowless (and, as of today, leaking) room are dozens of cubicles where these new TA’s work and meet with their students. On the faculty hierarchy (if we even achieve the status of “faculty”) we are the lowest of the low.
But there is something interesting happening on the walls of the Dodd Hall basement. Check it out:
Here, in the workspace of those at the lowest rung of the labour hierarchy at the university, we are surrounded by _white_space_. This makes me wonder (and I’m thinking of the abandoned buildings in New York and the many in my beloved Detroit): since we TA’s were given an abandoned space, an unuseable space, an invisible space in the university (literally underground), we are allowed some freedom in what we do with the space. We can make an impression on it, we can inscribe ourselves on the walls. The second year TA’s who work upstairs in the English department in the Williams Building are not afforded quite so much leeway in a more formal space.
An artist with a large presence on my side of town is “Kudzu.” The Kudzu vine is an invasive plant originally from Japan that has taken over the southwestern United States (especially in Tallahassee) since the growing conditions are ideal for it here. Here are some photos of his work that I have collected:
_white_space_ culture in Tallahassee is seemingly minimal; perhaps the small size of the city allows the city itself to maintain its watchful eye. But, by way of contrast, I want to demonstrate _white_space_ cultures in other urban areas. Check out these photos, all taken by my friend and correspondent, Sarah Butler:
(All photos Sarah Butler October 2009)
(This last photo is very subtle, but I think this is what makes it so fascinating; the work is the chalk outline on the wall that makes a “shadow” of the street signs on the corner.)
So, here we have what looks to be a thriving _white_space_ culture; clearly the vastness and tremendous population of New York’s Five Boroughs makes effective whitespace monitoring a virtually impossible task. On the other hand, some spaces seem to be abandoned, making them less “contested spaces” than…what exactly? What happens to spaces when whitespace monitoring becomes disinterested? Does this mean that these spaces have become default “free” space? Or does the fact that there is no whitespace monitoring “cleaning up” graffiti and street art invalidate the art in some way? Is contestation the defining feature of street art? And, if contestation is the defining feature of street art, would that mean that the work in Tallahassee is, perhaps, more valid, more effective, more necessary due to the higher level of whitespace surveillance here?
If you travel north along Monroe Street in Tallahassee, you’ll come upon a railroad bridge; I pass by this bridge every day on my way to the university:
One afternoon, I noticed that this was painted on the west pillar of this bridge:
It was a piece of art unique from other art I’ve seen in this city so far. But, on the other side of the same bridge, I found evidence of the city’s whitespacers:
So, again, I find the behavior of the city workers to be curious. It begs many questions: why did the whitespacers paint over this (I believe it was a tag) and not the other? If it was a conscious decision (and this seems to be the case since the whitespacers’ presence is very apparent in this area), what was the criteria for this choice? Did the silouette of the woman not fall under the city’s definition of “grafitti”? Why was the painting of the woman considered “acceptable art” and not the tag? What are the differences? Why are these choices up to city workers and not the larger community?
Marc and Sara, founders of Wooster Collective, advocate making more public space available to artists and communities.
more about "Marc + Sara Schiller, Founders of Woo…", posted with vodpod
As a way to get this discussion going, I want to juxtapose two positions in this discussion about _white_space_. These are the two fluctuating poles I intend to oscillate between (lots of movement going on) in order to complicate both views and (hopefully) generate new ways of thinking about art and public spaces.
Here in Tallahassee, the city has made a strong stance in regards to “graffiti”–read their position here. Central to this position is the idea of “consent” by the “property owner, authorized agent or designee.” So what does “consent” entail? Who provides it? In public spaces (and specifically Tallahassee), is consent an available option?
The City of Tallahassee also provides an online reporting form to report a “graffiti event” which is then sent to the Tallahassee Police Department. I have to admit, I like this idea of “graffiti event”–it suggests to me the entire rhetorical situation of graffiti/street art (am I right to conflate the two?)–the colliding vectors of the artist, the community in which he or she creates art, the physical location of the art, the actual act of creating the art (and the material requirements of such an act), and the reason for the creation of the art in the first place. Perhaps Tallahassee understands street art better than we give them credit for?
On the other hand, check out this interview with Favianna Rodriguez about the potential of graffiti as a pedagogical tool, and as a way to promote social change while simultaneously building community.
Rodriguez challenges the stigma attached to graffiti and street art and proposes that graffiti can be “reused and repurposed” to emphasize the positive “code of conduct” already present in graffiti and street art. Check out Rodriguez’s work with the Eastside Cultural Center in East Oakland here.
So the question is: how can we get these two disparate poles to speak to each other?
This blog is my attempt to stir up discussions about the use (and misuse) of public space both in my own locale and other communities.
I recently moved to Tallahassee, Florida after living for many years in Detroit (and surrounding environs) and I quickly noticed a difference between the thriving street art community (not to mention a well-established history of talent) there and my new locale. There was still some interesting work being done in my area, but I was surprised one day to discover much of it was painted over by the city with white paint:
This encounter immediately struck me as a fascinating demonstration of “white space”–a term used in visual art and graphic design to designate the area on the page left “blank.” But far from being passive space, “white space” operates in tandem with the subject or the image to provide balance, suggest context, and generate meaning.
Using this definition of “white space” as a springboard, I want to re-conceive of it here instead as “_white_space_”–blank spaces in public locales that are clearly not passive, blank palettes, but rather politically-charged, contested spaces, points where meaning has the great potential to be made (and unmade). By participating in the ongoing debates circling around street art, access, and community, I hope to expand our definition about public space and how it is used.
As if to confirm my thinking of contested “_white_space_”, the next day I walked past the same area, only to discover this:
