The Mediated City 06: Street Arts

Arriving into a large city by train, metro or subway, it's very likely that the concrete or brick sidings you see out the window are covered in graffiti. As you make your way off the train, into the streets you might see all manner of stylised inscriptions and names, written in black permanent marker on buildings and street furniture; or murals painted into their material location with a precision suggesting time, and even permission, being given to complete the work. You may value all these markings on urban surfaces, seeing them as part of the vibrant public culture of the city – or even just cool. Or you may distinguish the value of some markings from others. Perhaps those tags, made in permanent marker, don’t meet your criteria for art. Institutional authorities, such as the transport police, or the local government, will certainly have their own fine distinctions too, between who might mark, and what may be marked, on urban surfaces. Writing and drawing on walls is an ancient urban practice, but its status today remains ambiguous. For some, it represents criminal activity or simple vandalism; for others it is to be celebrated: as subversive art forms, often giving voice to those on the urban margins; but also, increasingly, as art associated with an emergent, gritty, hipster-esque urban aesthetic. In this episode, we explore the evolution of graffiti and street art as urban media that have travelled from the streets into galleries, circulating online images, merchandise, commercial graphic design and even advertising.

Thinkers discussed: Kurt Iveson (Publics and the City); Anthony Lee (Painting on the Left: Diego Rivera, Radical Politics and San Francisco's Public Murals); Joe Austin (Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City / More to See Than a Canvas in a White Cube: For an Art in the Streets); Virág Molnár (Street Art and the Changing Urban Public Sphere); Luke Dickens (Pictures on Walls? Producing, Pricing and Collecting the Street Art Screen Print); Alison Young (Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination); Mark Halsey & Ben Pederick (The Game of Fame: Mural, Graffiti, Erasure)

Music: ‘The Mediated City Theme’ by Scott Rodgers License: CC BY-NC (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)